Archive for May, 2011

Making a cup of tea or coffee is surprisingly complex.  Yet this seemingly unexceptional challenge has been exercising the mighty brains of robotics experts for the last twenty years. One such expert is Dr. Michael Suppa, head of Department Perception and Cognition at the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR).  His team has been working on Rollin’ Justin, a robot that can interpret objects with a stereo camera system and understand their significance to the task.  Dr. Suppa is working with researcher Dr. Andrew Davison at Imperial College, London in robot navigation. “Once the robot starts moving, the scene is updated - a very graphics intensive task”, says Davison. Even when Justin knows what objects are, it still has to decide where to grip the object and how tightly.  As research partner, Dr. Jeremy Wyatt at University of Birmingham explains, “Justin uses learning as a predictor to both mass and the forces needed to be applied.” For more information, click HERE.

Vision for Service Robots is a new report from Vision Systems Design that provides a comprehensive review of the technologies, markets, and opportunities for suppliers of vision components, the researchers and integrators who are building service robots, and companies and organizations interested in entering the market. This groundbreaking 120-page report is based on extensive interviews and original research compiled over eight months by Adil Shafi, president of Advenovation, and Conard Holton, Editor of Vision Systems Design. It identifies multiple near-term market opportunities for vision components and systems totaling several billion dollars, and opportunities in the longer term that promise to be even greater. For more information, click HERE.

Cognex’s latest DataMan 500 fixed-mount barcode reader is the subject of a 30 min webcast scheduled for Thursday, May 26, 2011 at 2:00 PM (Eastern Daylight Time - US) EDT. Presented by Matt Engle, Manager of ID Products at Cognex, the webcast will give attendees the chance to win an Apple TV digital media receiver (approx. value $99 USD) by registering for the event. The Contest is only open to legal residents of the USA ages 18 and over currently living in the 50 United States and the District of Columbia (void in U.S. overseas territories and wherever else prohibited and/or restricted by law). Those who would like to register for this event, click HERE. It’s worth a look. I saw the product in action and it is rather impressive.

It is with great sadness that we must report the passing of Steven Montellese who at 59, died in Pittsburgh, PA on May 20, 2011, surrounded by his family and friends. Steve was born August 10, 1951, in New York City. He attended college at the City College of New York and graduate school at Brown University. He was a brilliant man with many great achievements, and he filled many roles. He was a pioneer in computer vision, a legendary host, a food critic, an author, an inventor, a philosopher, a world traveler, a brother, a son, and a father. From 1986, Steve was president of Millennia 3, a company that developed and marketed low cost, custom machine vision solutions for the industrial manufacturing industry. M3 was the first company to market personal computer based vision systems, as well as expanding the technology to three dimensional gauging and color machine vision. Perhaps many of our readers will remember him most as the Manager of Applications at Automatix, Inc (Billerica, MA) where he was responsible for product planning, marketing support, and corporate strategic planning. Steve is survived by his father, Pat Montellese; brother, Mark Montellese; son, Eric Montellese; daughter, Julia Montellese; and two grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his mother, Libby Montellese. A visitation will be held at H.P. Brandt Funeral Home from 2 pm to 4 pm, followed by a memorial service at 4 pm. In lieu of flowers, donations should be sent to the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, 803 Liberty Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15222. Phone: (412) 471-6070.

Based in Taastrup, Denmark, Superfos a/s is Europe’s largest manufacturer of injection-molded plastic packaging, supplying packaging for food, non-food and healthcare markets. To ensure a 100% quality assurance of their products, Superfos partnered with TriVision a/s, a leading Danish machine vision solution provider, to implement a machine vision inspection system on their Randers, Denmark production lines dedicated to containers for butter and other dairy products. For the inspection of square butter boxes, TriVision selected Stingray F-046B cameras to control material defects: Two cameras are positioned below a conveyor belt and inspect the inside surface of the box as it passes above them. Simultaneously, an AVT Stingray F-201B inspects the printed artwork from above to check the correct position of the label and barcode. The lids used to seal the containers are controlled on separate lines using Stingray F-201C color cameras. For more information click HERE.

Dr. John Haddon has been appointed as Technical Consultant for the UK Industrial Vision Association (UKIVA), following the retirement of Don Braggins. John is the founding director of Panther Vision Ltd, which joined the Association towards the end of 2009. John will be the first point of contact for anybody requesting technical advice from the Association, and will contribute articles to the trade and technical press as part of the Association’s continuing objective to raise and maintain awareness of the capabilities of vision technology in manufacturing industry. He has been a visiting Professor at the Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing at the University of Surrey and a Visiting Fellow at both Surrey University and the University of Exeter. For more information, click HERE.