Cognex Corporation, one of the world leaders in Industrial machine vision, has expanded the capabilities of the In-Sight 2800 vision system to include an optical character recognition (OCR) tool. The new ViDi EL reading tool, powered by edge learning technology, makes it easy to read human-readable characters on reflective, low-contrast and non-flat surfaces.
“The In-Sight 2800 with edge learning technology redefines ease of use, making it easy to deploy AI-based applications regardless of the user’s experience level,” said Lavanya Manohar, Vice President, Vision Systems, Inc., ViDi EL Reader The extraction tool is trained based on examples, replacing complex programming, which makes it simple to set up an OCR model to read characters on difficult surfaces, and even be able to read multiple lines of text at the same time.”
Cognex serves many different industries, and many companies are looking for an easy-to-use OCR solution. This new product has attracted great attention from these companies. Food and beverage manufacturers can easily read the expiration date on the surface to confirm whether the product has expired and prevent consumer recalls. Medical device and pharmaceutical companies can verify date and batch codes to ensure vaccine efficacy and compliance with medical standards. Electric vehicle manufacturers can quickly locate and read laser-etched alphanumeric text on the underside of electric vehicle batteries for improved traceability. Logistics facilities can read codes and text on different types of packages to ensure correct routing assignments and prevent rework.
In the past, OCR application setup was time-consuming, requiring hours of programming by highly trained engineers, which prevented many companies from automating this type of detection. Now with the ViDi EL reading tool, users only need 10 sample images to complete the model setup and deployment directly on the device within minutes. The accuracy of detection results is measured by a confidence score, which is displayed below each trained character, providing visual feedback in real time and ensuring reliable traceability throughout the supply chain.
First introduced in April 2022, the In-Sight 2800 vision system is specifically designed to solve complex classification applications. ViDi EL reading tools will start shipping this quarter. In addition, Cognex is currently developing additional tools and plans to launch them in the coming months.
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