Seeing is believing

Image processing has made significant strides over the past few years, as better sensors and cheaper processing power have brought image processing components into the mass-market of consumer products, such as mobile phones.

This increase, both in the number and diversity of applications, has led to falls in prices per component — and thus good times for manufacturers.

In a recent US survey, 64 per cent of respondents involved in specifying, recommending and/or buying machine vision equipment said they expected to increase expenditure in this area over the next 12 months, up from 35 per cent a year previously.

Earlier in the year a report from business consulting firm

noted that such systems are benefiting from greater user-friendliness, easier integration and reduced operator training time as systems themselves become more capable.

Much of the push for superior image sensors comes from the market for domestic devices such as mobile phone cameras. More powerful image sensors are being developed to have high power and low costs and are being released on a frequent basis.