The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jun. 18, 2002
Filed:
Mar. 10, 2000
Cyril C. Marrion, Jr., Acton, MA (US);
Ivan A. Bachelder, Newton, MA (US);
Edward A. Collins, Jr., N. Smithfield, RI (US);
Masayoki Kawata, Ohmiya, JP;
Sateesh G. Nadabar, Framingham, MA (US);
Cognex Corporation, Natick, MA (US);
Abstract
An improved vision system is provided for identifying and assessing features of an article. Systems are provided for developing feature assessment programs, which, when deployed, may inspect parts and/or provide position information for guiding automated manipulation of such parts. The improved system is easy to use and facilitates the development of versatile and flexible article assessment programs. In one aspect, the system comprises a set of step tools from which a set of step objects is instantiated. The set of step tools may comprise machine vision step objects that comprise routines for processing an image of the article to provide article feature information. A control flow data structure and a data flow data structure may each be provided. The control flow data structure charts a flow of control among the step objects. The data flow data structure includes a data flow connection providing access to portions of the data flow data structure for at least one of individual accessing and individual defining of a data source for a given step object.