The IDS NXT rio and rome (protection class IP65/67) industrial cameras exploit an artificial intelligence (AI) vision app that transforms them into high-performance inference cameras. Hardware and software are designed to allow AI-based vision tasks to be solved "on the edge" – in other words directly on the device. Inference times of only a few milliseconds are realized. As a result, the cameras are comparable to modern desktop CPUs in terms of accuracy and speed.
The NXT product line essentially offers an industrial camera platform that enables image processing directly on the device. By installing vision apps, the user determines which image processing tasks his device should solve. In the future, this principle will also enable the use of neural networks, for example for object recognition or object classification.
An AI vision app developed by IDS reconfigures the embedded hardware so that, for example, the FPGA serves as an AI
accelerator. At the same time, it ensures that users can load pre-trained artificial neural networks (ANNs) of different architectures onto the cameras and execute them. In the future, it will also be possible to install several neural networks in parallel, which will then cover successive work steps, for example.
The camera models also provide free choice of optics via a C-mount lens holder, industrial-grade M12 circular connectors, a serial RS-232 interface, GigE network connection, and Power-over-Ethernet (PoE). Instead of a continuous and unfiltered data stream, images, pre-processed data, or results are transmitted directly to PCs or machine controls.
For more details, peruse the rio and rome info page.