The Kendall-Jackson winery packages more than 3 million cases of wine each year, so it’s a big challenge to position labels on bottles that race through its production lines. Compounding the challenge, bottles emerge from the labeling stage in a random position. The Fulton, Calif., winery solves its problem with machine vision, which helps increase efficiency in bottle inspection. That’s a growing trend in California wine country, which ranks behind only France, Italy, and Spain with production in excess of 500 million gallons of wine per year.

Kendall-Jackson handled its labeling problem with help from CIVision LLC, of Aurora, Ill. Its 360 Full View inspection system checks the labels after they have been placed on the bottles. Four cameras simultaneously examine a bottle as it leaves the labeling space. The application highlights the many changes occurring in vision, as prices come down and sophistication rises. Lighting remains a key issue—CIVision employs eight fluorescent tubes to provide enough light for four Basler GigE Scout cameras. The GigE nomenclature for those cameras, which stands for Gigabit Ethernet, highlights the networking technology that is making it simpler to run multi-camera systems at very high speeds.

The system is personal computer (PC)-based, though many companies employ smart cameras, which house processors so they don’t need PCs to analyze images and decide whether parts pass or fail. These less-expensive smart camera systems are enabling smaller companies to employ vision—which is helping drive machine vision revenues up solidly. Analyst firm Frost & Sullivan predicts that the vision inspection market will rise from $2.3 billion in 2006 to $3.7 billion in 2013.

Regardless of what vision techniques are being used, vendors and integrators say there are a number of benefits to be gained. “To guarantee zero defects, you need inspection. You need vision systems to tell you the system’s going out of calibration. If you wait until you realize you’re out of spec, it’s too late,” says Charles Magnan, vice president at Averna Vision & Robotics Inc., an integrator and equipment designer based in Montreal.

Others note that the cost of vision systems pales in comparison to the potential costs of shipping defective products. “Security and traceability have become huge. If a product causes a problem, like contaminated consumables or a jet going down because of a faulty circuit board, the losses to the manufacturer can be huge,” says Kevin M. Malliet, vice president, sales & marketing, at integrator International Product Technology Inc., of New Berlin, Wis. “A vision system is like an insurance policy to help prevent that.”

Speedy cameras

 The cameras that determine the speed and performance of a system are evolving almost as rapidly as the electronic controls that make decisions based on camera input. Some of those cameras are combining both aspects, putting intelligence in the camera. Both conventional camera providers and systems companies such as National Instruments, an Austin, Texas, automation supplier, are offering these smart cameras.

These integrated systems often provide lower prices and simpler installation than conventional PC-based hardware. Installers don’t have to find space for controllers and their cables. Some integrators say that these integrated cameras offer better performance than many PC-based offerings. “Some high-speed jobs don’t afford the time to send data to the PC and back. If you’re checking something at 50 per second, you don’t have many milliseconds to react to each one. Without smart sensors, it’s not feasible,” Magnan says. With smart cameras, analysis and decisions can be made without the lag time of sending data to the PC and back.

However, he notes that there’s a limit to the capabilities of these space-constrained packages. They don’t have the memory or peripheral boards that let PC-based systems perform more complex analyses of the images. “Trying to run a complex algorithm on a smart sensor will slow it down,” Magnan says.

For more complex tasks that are often tied to higher speed manufacturing, most users will turn to conventional packages. “The industry has gone toward smart cameras, but they only offer so much processing power. We use PC-based systems that can run algorithms at blistering speed,” says Greg Raciti, engineering manager at Faber Associates, a Clifton, N.J., system integrator.

These powerful controllers can be linked to the latest generation of cameras, which run far faster than their predecessors.

“Dalsa’s newest cameras run at ungodly speeds, 160 frames per second. Our original systems ran at 30 frames per second, until recently they ran at 60 frames per second with 640 x 480 images,” Raciti says.

Those ...