ARCwire -- National Instruments announced NI Vision Builder for Automated Inspection (AI) Version 3.0, the latest upgrade to the interactive software for configuring, benchmarking, and deploying complete machine vision applications without programming. This version introduces a new state-machine process model that gives engineers one of the most flexible environments available for configuring vision systems. With this process model, engineers can customize the execution flow of their inspections to meet a wide variety of machine vision challenges, from component alignment to part inspection and verification. Through the use of state machines, Vision Builder AI now combines the flexibility of a programming language with the ease of use of a configuration environment.
With the state-machine process model within Vision Builder AI, engineers can graphically customize the flow of their applications with conditional branches or iterative loops, allowing a single inspection to dynamically adjust with each new image. With Vision Builder AI 3.0, engineers can solve most machine vision application challenges without the use of a programming language or complicated customization tools. Also, because state machines are inherently self-documenting, they provide engineers with an intuitive way to organize vision applications and share information easily among colleagues.
Vision Builder AI also includes new algorithms for golden template comparison, optical character verification, and data matrix grading designed to help engineers identify quality errors earlier in production. To communicate results, Vision Builder AI now works with all NI-DAQmx-compatible hardware devices, enabling engineers to read and write digital and analog inspection information to any NI-DAQmx-compatible device, such as M Series data acquisition or NI CompactDAQ devices.