These days, food safety has become a matter of growing concern among Japanese consumers because of frequent, highly publicized instances of food poisoning by dairy products, as well as the threat of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) and incidents of intentionally mislabling at beef production centers. Faced with these situations, consumers have begun to demand stricter quality control for food products. OMRON's Pattern Vision technology is expected to play an increasingly important role in addressing these issues.

In Japan, most food product packages have a label with information such as expiration date and freshness date, and many Japanese consumers check these dates before deciding to purchase. The label may also include a serial number and a symbol to identify the factory where the product was made. These indications on the labels are strictly checked before the product is shipped from the factory. But it is difficult or impossible for human operators to check a huge volume of products one by one. This is where vision sensors come in, to replace human operators and handle the inspection task by using image data.

OMRON's Pattern Vision technology-based vision sensors are earning an excellent reputation among workers in the food processing and industrial manufacturing industries for their high performance that contributes to enhanced quality control. The most recognized point is the sensors' capability to accommodate deformations in characters. Most previous-generation vision sensors could only detect certain fonts, but OMRON vision sensors can recognize a wide range of different fonts. In addition, these sensors can ensure stable and accurate detection regardless of the font size or width, and whether it is rotated, slanted, or even containing broken lines or different line widths.

Six major variations of characters

The ability to load advanced character/mark recognition capabilities on a single chip and offer it at reasonable cost is the biggest strength of OMRON's Pattern Vision technology. Over the past few years, food traceability has become a major public issue. OMRON's Pattern Vision technology enables more thorough control and assurance of food safety by contributing to enhanced efficiency and reliability of food traceability management from the farm to retail sale.

Another application of Pattern Vision technology is in the area of automobile license plate detectors. These detectors have many uses, such as vehicle access control for companies and factories. For example, a detector can be used in a system that automatically notifies the building manager if a car with a non-registered license plate enters a parking area. Another example is an electronic traffic information board that can inform drivers of the approximate travel time between two points. This is accomplished by detecting the travel time of individual cars distinguished by their license plate numbers via cameras at the start and end point. Based on this data, the traffic control center issues an instruction to display the estimated time on the information board.

Travel time measurement system using a license plate detector

OMRON's license plate detection unit is very popular in the traffic control market in Japan because of its ability to reliably and accurately detect even small characters from low-quality images taken in varied outdoor conditions.

Mimicking Human Vision: The Secret to Superior Performance

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