Machine Vision vs Computer Vision: Everything You Need to Know

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What is machine vision?

Machine vision encompasses the technology, methods, software, and hardware involved in visual input processing, typically in an industrial environment. In simple terms, machine vision is a system that captures images of a given environment using specialty cameras. This information is then processed and used for various applications such as visual inspection and object detection (which we’ll cover in more detail below).

How does machine vision work?

First, high quality cameras capture images of the environment. From there, certain pre-defined aspects of these images are processed. For example, suppose a machine vision algorithm is trained to be able to detect stop signs in photos. If the system captures an image of a street with multiple houses on each side, it will only look for the presence of a stop sign.

What is computer vision?

Computer vision is a field of AI that is used to process and analyze visual content such as images and video. The main goal of computer vision is task automation, and it allows a computer to “see” and analyze visual content similar to how a human would. Computer vision is often used for object identification in a variety of fields and applications ranging from manufacturing environments to in-vehicle applications (which we’ll dive deeper into below).

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How does computer vision work?

Computer vision works by processing and analyzing visual inputs repeatedly until the algorithm has learned to recognize patterns and objects. Let’s take the same example we used for our definition of machine vision; a computer vision system could analyze a picture of a street with multiple houses on each side. It could then scan and identify the houses, the street, and various road signs, then analyze this data and deduce that the image is of a residential street.

Looking for your AI vision solution or have any questions about machine vision vs computer vision? Check out our line of machine vision computers, which are also an ideal fit for computer vision applications, and contact OnLogic today.

For further reading, check out our customer stories on Artemis Vision and Flasheye to see how OnLogic became the platform for their machine vision and computer vision (respectively) solutions.

You can read the full in depth article here or subscribe to our email communications for more information.