As an OEM the ones we deployed definitely saw (and are probably still seeing) production. I can personally confirm off the top of my head that Proctor & Gamble, Revlon, Duracell, Mars Candy, Bausch & Lomb, Pfizer, Gilead Sciences, Boehringer Ingelheim (and more) use Cognex cameras in their product packaging lines.
The promise is - as you say yourself - in systems that are easily maintained by non-vision experienced engineers. As I noted in another post, these are usually controls engineers that overwhelmingly prefer ladder logic on their PLCs and have little exposure to modern software engineering practices such as source control. Obviously it's not "up in an afternoon" - any sales rep that promised that got sent away (Keyence, I'm looking at you) - debugging consists of a lot of product test runs and more mechanical/controls work and definitely takes more than a day.
I tried on more than one occasion to put forward PC-based systems, but the customers wanted the smart cameras. Though I did frequently use OpenCV for batch image analysis in-house, I ought to write an article or two about that bit.
>I can personally confirm off the top of my head that Proctor & Gamble, Revlon, Duracell, Mars Candy, Bausch & Lomb, Pfizer, Gilead Sciences, Boehringer Ingelheim (and more) use Cognex cameras in their product packaging lines.
>I tried on more than one occasion to put forward PC-based systems, but the customers wanted the smart cameras.
Oh, all those that you listed also use PC-based systems. I know because all of them are also customers of ours.
The promise is - as you say yourself - in systems that are easily maintained by non-vision experienced engineers. As I noted in another post, these are usually controls engineers that overwhelmingly prefer ladder logic on their PLCs and have little exposure to modern software engineering practices such as source control. Obviously it's not "up in an afternoon" - any sales rep that promised that got sent away (Keyence, I'm looking at you) - debugging consists of a lot of product test runs and more mechanical/controls work and definitely takes more than a day.
I tried on more than one occasion to put forward PC-based systems, but the customers wanted the smart cameras. Though I did frequently use OpenCV for batch image analysis in-house, I ought to write an article or two about that bit.