MERLIC Runtime Environment

The MERLIC Runtime Environment (or MERLIC RTE for short) represents the process integration mode of MERLIC. It enables the communication with a machine controller, for example, a programmable logic controller (PLC) via signals and commands. MERLIC RTE is necessary whenever MERLIC or a MERLIC Vision App (MVApp) is to be controlled via a manufacturing machine. In process integration mode, the corresponding communication device is given control, for example, to execute an MVApp. This way the machine controller is able to control the vision system, monitor the execution, and query the results.

MERLIC RTE offers various advantages:

• The PLC is able to control the execution of an MVApp.
• The PLC may observe and query the current internal state of MERLIC during the process integration.
• The PLC may query the results of the image processing task.
• The communication with the PLC is independent of the machine vision task in the MVApp and you can create different configurations for any MVApp and PLC.

To use MERLIC RTE, you first have to set up various independent resources such as the MVApp, MERLIC recipe files A MERLIC recipe file is a crucial part for the MERLIC process integration. It is a separate file (with file ending .mrcp) that defines which MERLIC Vision App is loaded for the process integration. It also defines how the MVApp is parametrized because it contains a set of pre-defined input values for selected tool parameters. You can create multiple recipe files with individual sets of input values for one and the same MVApp. This enables you to reuse an MVApp with different parameter settings for various scenarios of your application. You can also use a recipe file to load an MVApp for a completely different image processing task., and the communication device. MERLIC provides several plug-ins for different communication devices and technologies. There are basically two types of plug-ins to which we will refer as "communication plug-ins" and "I/O plug-ins". For more information on the provided plug-ins, see Communication and I/O Plug-ins for MERLIC RTE.