Hybrid Expert Systems In Image Analysis

Vision systems capable of inspecting industrial components and assemblies have a large potential market if they can be easily programmed and produced quickly. Currently, vision application software written in conventional high-level languages such as C or Pascal are produced by experts in program design, image analysis, and process control. Applications written this way are difficult to maintain and modify. Unless other similar inspection problems can be found, the final program is essentially one-off redundant code. A general-purpose vision system targeted for the Visual Machines Ltd. C-VAS 3000 image processing workstation, is described which will make writing image analysis software accessible to the non-expert both in programming computers and image analysis. A significant reduction in the effort required to produce vision systems, will be gained through a graphically-driven interactive application generator. Finally, an Expert System will be layered on top to guide the naive user through the process of generating an application.