Using Pipe® For Inspection Applications

This paper will describe PIPE® and how its capabilities can be used for inspection applications. PIPE is a high performance parallel processor with an architecture specifically designed for the processing of video images at up to 60 fields per second. The unit is modular and programmable. It processes sequences of images through a pipeline of point processors, image buffers and arithmetic or Boolean neighborhood operators. There are multiple data pathways between the stages in forward, recursive and backward directions that allow images to interact in many useful ways. Due to its architecture, PIPE inherently allows the processing of many images simultaneously for working with dynamic scenes or multiple combinations of the same image. Although originally designed for robot guidance applications, PIPE has many features that make it well suited for use in inspection. For these inspection applications, this multiple image capability allows the pipelining of different processes on different images at the same time. In addition, a programmable region of interest capability allows different processes to be run on different areas of the same image. Illustrations of some these techniques will be presented.