Machine vision redefined: scalable solutions with Siemens Industrial Edge
Many customers want to integrate machine vision solutions more efficiently and intelligently into production automation, without requiring deep expertise or creating technologically complex stand-alone solutions. Sounds like a challenge, doesn’t it? Dr. Stefan Meier, Ecosystem Manager for Industrial Edge at Siemens, explains how and why the Industrial Edge Ecosystem comes into play.
Edge computing enables large amounts of data to be captured and processed locally. The open software architecture of Siemens Industrial Edge allows customers to transform data into meaningful information and insights and develop solutions tailored to their individual requirements. At the same time, it offers the flexibility to centrally manage and scale IT applications on the shop floor. For machine vision users, this means that complex vision applications can be more efficiently integrated into production processes to ensure quality, increase productivity, minimize downtime, and achieve a new level of transparency.
Siemens and MVTec first presented their cooperation at the SPS 2023 trade show in Nuremberg, Germany. The partnership was launched with the Anomaly Detection for Visual Inspection application, which is based on MVTec’s MERLIC all-in-one software and is available via the Siemens Industrial Edge Marketplace. Customers can use this app to easily deploy image-based AI anomaly detection and scale it in production via Industrial Edge.
In numerous discussions Siemens and MVTec had with customers about the challenges of integrating machine vision solutions, it has become clear that customers’ use cases and requirements are extremely diverse. To meet this demand, more flexible and adaptable solutions are required. Therefore, Siemens and MVTec are taking the next step in their partnership by bringing MVTec’s MERLIC software to Siemens Industrial Edge in the near future. With this offering, customers will have access to a complete toolbox to realize their own machine vision applications in a no-code development environment – from hardware integration and image capture to AI-based analysis and visualization of the results.
In summary, the partnership with MVTec and other companies in the Siemens Industrial Edge Ecosystem enables customers to seamlessly integrate AI and rules-based vision applications into their automation processes.
Using MVTec Anomaly Detection and Siemens Industrial Edge in Battery Cell Production
At SPS 2024, MVTec demonstrated the visual inspection of cylindrical 4680 battery cells. In the production process, this ensures that the battery cells are in perfect condition both at the end of cell production and before they are installed in modules or packs. The vision application running on Siemens Industrial Edge and MVTec MERLIC checks and measures the diameter and roundness of the battery cell as well as the insulation ring. In addition to this information, the visualization also displays the execution time of the inspection task of less than 30ms (SIMATIC IPC427E) and the number of inspected battery cells.
