The Future of LED Illumination in Machine Vision

It was not that long ago when LED lights took the world of consumer illumination by storm. Now, with their great efficiency and growing versatility, they are becoming just as popular in advanced robotics. Many of today’s cutting-edge machine vision systems rely on LEDs.

LEDs are extremely reliable and long-lived, providing for a variety of needs while adding very little maintenance overhead. Thanks to DC-based architecture, they do not exhibit flickering that could cause problems with CCD cameras. Plus, they offer superior dimming capabilities.

Even these great features are only the beginning when it comes to LED's full potential.

The Key Features Driving LED Adoption

LED is gaining market share in machine vision for a variety of reasons:

Extremely Low Cost of Ownership

LED lifespan generally ranges near 50,000 hours compared to the 1,000-hour lifespan of the average 40-watt incandescent bulb. This makes a tremendous difference in system maintenance. Since LEDs run extremely cool, they also minimize wear and tear on other system components.

Extraordinary Range of Colors and Geometries

LEDs are widely available across the visible and invisible light spectrum, from ultra-violet to near-infrared. This allows development of machine vision systems with high-level spectral discrimination characteristics – easily detecting minute defects during product inspection.

How Are LEDs Being Used in Today’s Machine Vision Systems?

In the commercial sector, LEDs first began to emerge in industrial environments, supporting high-speed quality control applications under variable lighting. Now, they are found in a wide range of systems and scenarios.

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Some common uses of LEDs include:

• Traffic flow control and traffic cameras;
• Industrial and consumer camera flash units;
• Digital displays;
• Portable and fixed lighting.

LEDs are particularly attractive in machine vision systems not only because of high availability and low cost, but due to unique technical characteristics. LED performance characteristics like power, wavelength, and light are more variable than those of other lighting sources. This makes it easy to adjust systems “on the fly” and achieve complex edge geometry monitoring.

The long lifespan and consistent output of LEDs facilitates the design of machine vision systems that are precisely calibrated to the color and reflectance of the components the system inspects. LED-based systems can run continuously and reliably until the end of their service life – this compares well to fluorescents, which suffer increasing performance degradation over time.

The Future of LEDs in Machine Vision Looks Bright

LEDs represent a truly robust, sophisticated, and scalable solution for today's advanced quality control challenges. It is reasonable to predict that within just a few years, the lion’s share of new quality control systems in auto plants and other demanding environments will be LED-based. Yet, due to LED's low cost, any engineer can access them right now.

To learn more about the future of LED illumination in machine vision, be sure to register for our free upcoming webinar, Machine Vision Lighting.