Scorpion Colour Matcher watches paint dry!

Scorpion is a new generation of Machine Vision technology that exploits today's low cost but powerful Windows based PCs

Scorpion is a new generation of Machine Vision technology that exploits today's low cost but powerful Windows based PCs.

Scorpion can be used in just about any machine vision scenario and has advantages over traditionally expensive MV technologies in that very low cost components can be integrated using standard USB, firewire or other interface drivers recognised by the Windows OS.

Another notable quality of Scorpion is the highly accurate colour matching system that exists within the basic toolset.

Recent work has highlighted the power of Scorpion for identifying and matching colours.

This is a capability that is available in the basic suite of tools available to the vision engineer and can be configured in a relatively short period of time using a series of mouse actions and screen measurements.

The colour matching systems have recently been deployed in 3 very different industries - production of colour matching cards for the paint industry, measurement and analyses of fruit in the field before harvest and in the processing of potatoes on a food production line.

DISL is also currently studying the ability of the software to measure and match blue flame in an engineering process.

With Scorpion, the complex algorithms for colour matching already exist within the software shell and so it is up to the operator to define the specifics of the measurement or the detection.

Once the operator has trained the system with the required values and has set the tolerances, detection can begin.

The system picks the best colour match from a set of reference images and can calculate the colour coverage of the inspected item at up to 15 items per second.

Using a built in Colour Segmentor Tool the software can be used to detect a specific value or range of values within the HSI (Hue Saturation and Intensity) model.

Scorpion provides a visual representation of the processing it is carrying out and can show the 3 segmented component parts of the subject matter.

If a specific colour range is being tracked, the software gives the operator confidence that it is doing it's work by displaying a visualisations that highlight the areas within the image that match the predefined colours.

This system can be used in any scenario where high accuracy colour matching is critical - from pharmaceutical applications to production of fabric dye.

It takes the guesswork out of colour matching and speeds up the process one hundred fold!.

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