On the application of configurable computing to real-time industrial visual inspection

This paper describes the configurable computing paradigm and discusses its application to real-time industrial visual inspection applications. Automated visual inspection (AVI) applications are briefly described, discussing their requirements over electronic and computing systems. Different technological alternatives usable in these systems are compared. The implementation of a complete configurable computing system is described discussing the different choices in every design step. The system is based on the PCI bus and uses a personal computer as host, with Windows95-98 operating systems. This host computer is in charge of controlling and configuring the designed hardware to map the requirements of AVI applications. The system described is structured using a modular approach that allows users to customize their system to fit the resources required by their applications.