A display of tremendous book smarts
With the system fully functional and deployed, the R&D department of Bookscanner SA is hard at work on the next release of the vision system’s software, introducing the ability to correct image distortion with neural networks. “This enhancement will help increase our customer base, allowing us to work with more fragile books without risk of stretching or damaging the paper,” Gasteratos noted.
Bookscanner SA is excited at the prospect of adding new machine vision techniques to the advanced robotics industry, with plans to expand their solution on both the hardware and software sides. Teneketzis affirmed that, “the machine vision techniques will be one of our main focus areas for the product. New capabilities—like grabbing based on image/pattern recognition—are going to be introduced, and Matrox Imaging will be a good partner in order to achieve our goals.”
Conclusion
Incorporating MIL-Lite and the Radient eV-CXP frame grabber into the Bookscanner system afforded an opportunity to connect high-level software abstraction with low-level electronics management; this facilitated operator changes and improved overall system functionality. With the addition of the Matrox Imaging products, Bookscanner SA reduced their development time by nearly six months, and protected their budget from additional expenses. Arvanitidis concluded, “We gained time, established the necessary communication, and successfully overcame this challenge of upgrading our vision system, thanks to the plug-and-play nature of the MIL-Lite software.”
Acknowledgements
The following individuals were invaluable in their contributions to development of the Bookscanner SA vision system:
Dr. Antonios Gasteratos, professor and head of the production and management department at Democritus University of Thrace, for his knowledge of computer vision and robotics.
Petros Teneketzis, mechanical engineer, who brought expertise in mechanics, dynamics, and CAD systems.
Antonios Arvanitidis, electrical and computer engineer, for his knowledge of software and hardware design and development, control systems, and machine vision.