From craftwork towards industrial production in the development of real-time machine vision software

A systematic method is proposed for designing and developing a machine vision algorithm and transferring it from a non-real time environment to a real time target system. The systematic design of a real time system by the Real Time Structured Analysis method and the inclusion of the use of image processing tools and algorithm design as a separate phase during system design are discussed. The concept is first clarified by explaining a hypothetical real-time system design example, after which a more realistic example of a real-time machine vision system provided by a company is analyzed, a bottle crate returning machine. A RT/SA model was created with the aid of a Prosa/SA case tool. Graphical animation of the RT/SA specification to help understanding of the model and the automatic generation of C code are evaluated