Acuity CiMatrix Unveils Complete Vision System in Single PCI Slot
RVSI Acuity CiMatrix, a division of Robotic Vision Systems, Inc., has unveiled what it says is the first complete machine vision system on a single PCI board for the Pentium/Windows PC.
Unveiled this week at Assembly Technology Expo, Visionscape is a new hardware and software platform with an on-board processor designed to significantly reduce development and deployment time. The system represents the first of a new generation of PCI machine vision hardware and software for both OEM and factory floor markets.
Ideal for pharmaceutical packaging inspection, Visionscape combines the capabilities of the entire Acuity CiMatrix product line in one state-of-the-art platform, and adds new machine vision technology for inspection, measurement, guidance and symbology reading applications, including data matrix reading. The product supports OCV, bar code reading and data matrix reading technology for direct on-part marking applications. This range of capabilities and performance is provided all on a single PCI board.
"One of the major advantages of the RVSI Acuity CiMatrix Visionscape product is its ability to perform vision tasks across a wide variety of manufacturing environments," said Rajiv Kumar, senior analyst at marketing consultant Frost & Sullivan. "We expect the machine vision market to experience major growth in the next five years, and Visionscape is well placed to take advantage of that growth."
Visionscape features an on-board CPU running a real-time operating system and on-board high-performance vision acceleration hardware. This allows it to perform vision processing operations an order of magnitude faster than current generation systems or CPU-only based products. Because all of the vision processing is performed on the board itself, the host PC is available to run other programs in parallel with Visionscape without affecting its deterministic performance. This is crucial in configurations that require machine vision to operate in real-time on the same host as other applications, such as PC-based machine controls. Moreover, built-in multi-protocol network connectivity ensures readiness to transparently participate in manufacturing floor networks/intranets and for remote monitoring/diagnostics.
Visionscape supports up to four analog cameras, advanced digital cameras, on-board SVGA display, digital and analog I/O, built-in serial communications and network support, a Windows NT or Windows 95 graphical user interface and a powerful machine vision applications development environment with Visual Basic access to underlying ActiveX controls. Visionscape is designed to meet the needs of OEM equipment manufacturers, pharmaceutical packagers and users in other industries.
Acuity CiMatrix, a division of RVSI, is a supplier of machine vision systems, bar code and advanced two-dimensional symbology readers for manufacturing and distribution environments. For more information: RVSI Acuity CiMatrix, 5 Shawmut Road, Canton, MA 02021; Tel: 800/646-6664 or 781/821-0830.