VISTA - Visual interpretation system for technical applications - Architecture and use

This paper describes the present state of the construction of a vision system for the fast interpretation of more complicated industrial scenes which is being built at present at the Fraunhofer Institute for Information and Data Processing in Karlsruhe, Federal Republik of Germany. The scenes for which the system is intended are presented in short. They form the basis for specifying the requirements for the system called VISTA. Its principal architecture as a bus-oriented multiprocessor system is discussed. Some special hardware modules of VISTA are described in more detail, and its basic software concept is introduced. Finally, detection and classification of defects that appear in automatic visual inspection of hard wood, where the capabilities of VISTA are required to a high degree, are reviewed. Using special modules for the iconic and the symbolic stage, VISTA is capable of real-time processing and evaluation of endless images, image sequences, images of various formats, and mulis ensorial data.