OmniView™ Technology

for high-speed, non-stop inspection of randomly oriented cylindrical containers

Imagine how useful it would be to inspect the entire cylindrical surface of bottles, cans, vials, or cosmetic containers without the need for orientation or accurate positioning. This seemingly impossible capability is what OmniView™ technology from Cognex provides. OmniView uses 4 cameras to obtain a 360-degree view of all features on the entire surface. It can read barcodes, verify text, inspect graphics and measure features at production line speeds of up to 1,200 parts per minute.   

OmniView is a revolutionary vision software technology that uses images from multiple cameras to create one seamless and undistorted 360-degree image of any cylindrical surface. Obtaining such an image without OmniView requires stopping and rotating each cylindrical object in front of a line scan camera - a complex process that is too slow for today’s high-speed production lines.

Instead, OmniView uses images from multiple area cameras positioned around the cylindrical object to instantly generate a virtual 3D surface model. OmniView then creates a seamless, undistorted, “unwrapped” image of the complete surface to which optical character recognition (OCR), barcode reading, and other machine vision software tools can be applied. Eliminating the complex and expensive requirement to mechanically spin parts in order to inspect them dramatically reduces complexity, lowers cost and significantly boosts throughput.

“In the food, beverage, and pharmaceutical packaging industries, OmniView allows customers to more cost-effectively avoid mislabeling errors, comply with evolving safety standards, and ensure product quality,” said Marilyn Matz, Cognex Senior VP, PC Vision Products Group. “OmniView’s non-stop, no-spin inspection of directly-printed or labeled cylindrical containers is ideal for achieving accurate, reliable non-contact, 100-percent inspection on even the fastest-paced packaging lines.”

OmniView handles a wide range of packaging applications to ensure product quality and package integrity such as:
  
• Detecting damaged products
• Checking for date code presence
• Confirming package and product match
• Preventing packaging mix ups
• Detecting wrong or mislabeled products
• Reading 1D barcodes and 2D matrix codes
• Verifying required allergen statements
• Assessing print quality
• Checking for torn or missing labels
• Inspecting package graphics  

OmniView technology is available from Cognex through select system integrators. For more information visit www.cognex.com/omniview/. 

About Cognex
Cognex Corporation designs, develops, manufactures, and markets machine vision sensors and systems, or devices that can "see."  Cognex vision sensors are used in factories around the world to automate the manufacture of a wide range of items and to assure their quality. Cognex is the world's leader in the machine vision industry, having shipped more than 450,000 machine vision systems, representing over $2.5 billion in cumulative revenue, since the company's founding in 1981.  In addition to its corporate headquarters in Natick, Massachusetts, Cognex also has regional offices and distributors located throughout North America, Japan, Europe, Asia, and Latin America.  Visit Cognex on-line at http://www.cognex.com/.