NATICK, Mass., June 12 -- Cognex Corp. has entered into a multiyear product development and OEM agreement with Accu-Sort Systems, a provider of automation systems. Under the agreement, Cognex will develop machine vision products to be used by Accu-Sort to automatically acquire images of packages moving by at high speeds on material handling lines and then analyze those images in order to perform a variety of tasks. For example, these new systems will be used for determining various physical package features, positioning, OCR, OCV and pattern matching.
According to Cognex, the materials handling industry has historically used laser scanning systems to read bar code labels; however, the industry is increasingly turning to video camera-based scanning technology because it can provide additional information on products that cannot be included in linear or 2-D barcodes. Video scanning systems are capable of "seeing" the entire product or package -- not just the bar code label. With this added information, the scanner can even check the condition of the package or product.