[Work in Progress]
This repository contains template documents for people working in machine vision. The documents address common needs for marketing, R&D, engineering, sales, and support. These documents are similar to those used by established machine vision companies.
These documents are intended to save you time, trouble, effort, and money. If you would like to sells dozens, hundreds, or thousands of industrial vision systems for a specific use case, then you may find these documents useful as you navigate the early stages of product development.
Machine vision is the application of digital image processing to industrial automation and lab automation. You could also think of "machine vision" as "computer vision" for factories: cameras + computers + software + digital communications + (etc.). A machine vision system captures images, makes measurements and/or decisions, and then outputs the data to another system such as a programmable logic controller (PLC).
If your vision system connects to a PLC, rotary encoder, conveyor built, production line, CMM, 6- or 7-axis industrial arm robot, pick and place robot, gantry robot, warehouse management system, or the like, then you should be aware that there is a half century (arguably, a century) of similar vision systems being lumped into the category of "machine vision." For at least some searches, try including the term "machine vision" in place of the term "computer vision."
The documents are expected to provide at least a bit of guidance for all of the following topics:
- requirements gathering
- specifications
- testing in the lab
- summarizing test results in terms familiar to customers in industry
- plans to integrate the vision system into a work cell, production cell, lab, or other larger system
- buyoff criteria
- vision system component lists
- legal commitments
- safety commitments
- performance commitments
- regulatory requirements
- cost accounting: are you charging enough to be profitable?
Assume these are merely starter documents. You and/or your colleagues are responsible for commitments to the customer, compliance with regulatory requirements, and so on.
If you'd credit the r/MachineVisionSystems subreddit or this Github repository that'd be grand. However, you'll likely want to modify the documents to insert your company logo, add language provided by your lawyer, and so on. Spin the documents into Matrix-level virtual reality docudrama experiences, if you'd like. The licensing terms are highly permissive.
These template documents are linked from the wiki for r/MachineVisionSystems on Reddit. At the time of this writing, the wiki is only a day old. Thank you for your patience!