Easy-To-Use General-Purpose Machine Vision System Based on a Massively Parallel Processing Engine

The objective of the overall SBIR program is to combine the flexibility and ease-of use of Acuity's general-purpose standard computer platform based machine vision systems with the raw processing power of Adatptive Solutions' massively parallel hardware to produce easy-to-use PC/Windows based high performance machine vision systems that can be used by manufacturing engineers and factory floor personnel to efficiently develop and deploy a wide variety of critical machine vision applications without requiring skilled programming. This project will thus advance the state of the art in machine vision technology, allow addressing more challenging applications in a cost effective manner, and leverage previous ARPA investment by making the massively parallel processing hardware developed under another program available to a new class of commercially important applications on the factory floor. Phase I tasks include: brief review of related work; analysis of application requirements; definition of system functionality and specifications; finalization of proposed system architecture and development of detailed hardware/software designs; exploration of approaches for vision processing algorithm acceleration using the neurocomputer hardware; development of limited breadboard prototypes. Based on the above work, needs for future R&D will be identified and Phase II efforts will be planned. ANTICIPATED BENEFITS: In addition to expected use in critical defense and aerospace manufacturing applications the proposed systems have very significant commercial potential in the semiconductor, electronics, automotive, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, packaging/containers, discrete parts, and consumer goods industries.