An earlier paper in this conference series, described the hardware and software for a Remotely Operated Prototyping Environment (ROPE). This enables a vision engineer, working a long way from the site of a proposed installation, to experiment with an image-acquisition sub-system that is already in situ. Using ROPE, a vision engineer is able to control the lighting, optics, camera, and object presentation, without ever leaving his own office. During the last 24 months, progress has been made, in enhancing ROPE’s facilities, most notably its control functions, user interface and the display of video image sequences. A real-time person-to-person communication system, intended to allow the vision engineer to perform a virtual tour of a remote factory, is also included. Recent developments in the associated image processing software (CIP) are the subject of a separate paper at this conference.
|