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Show Chapter 1 Introduction Computer vision is a challenging and exciting field of computer science. Since the first years when computers became available to the scientific community, the idea of using the digital computer to enhance images has existed. Applications involving the extraction of meaningful information from images range from industrial robots that can act upon visual information to automated visual inspection of satellite photos [18,16). The recent boom in hardware speed and affordability has made it possible to apply more computer vision techniques in industry, which to date have had limited success. Industrial applications have an advantage over other computer vision applications since the environment in which they operate can be tightly constrained. They are usually specific vision systems with well defined tasks. A more general vision system such as that of humans would be of tremendous use in any environment, but current technology is far from achieving this capability. It is possible however to produce a highly sophisticated vision system which incorporates human knowledge about the application and tools available, which is a step towards the more general and powerful system desired. Computer Aided Design systems (CAD) are becoming readily available in present day manufacturing. They have greatly increased the speed and reliability of product design and manufacturing. CAD /CAM systems have the capability to operate machinery to create designed parts without human intervention. As |
