HALCON Progress Key Visual shows a person running at high speed

HALCON 21.05

HALCON 21.05 was released in May 2021. As a HALCON Progress user, you can experience a variety of improvements and new features that will make solving your machine vision task even easier. Have a first look at this release's contents below:

  • Deep OCR improvements
  • Generic Shape Matching
  • HDevelop usability improvements
  • HALCON Deep Learning Framework
  • Subpixel bar code reader improvements
  • Improvements of basic operators in 2D and 3D for fast and robust preprocessing
Improved robustness and extended character support for Deep OCR

Deep OCR Improvements

With Deep OCR, HALCON includes a holistic deep-learning-based approach to OCR. Compared to other algorithms, this technology can localize characters much more robustly, regardless of their orientation, font type, and polarity. With HALCON 21.05, the performance and usability of Deep OCR have been improved. Big images are now handled more robustly and the result now contains a list of character candidates with corresponding confidence values, which can be used to further improve the recognition results. Customers also benefit from an overall improved stability as well as from the fact that they can address a wider range of possible applications, thanks to additional character support.

Industry-proven shape-based matching for robust localization of objects

Generic Shape Matching

HALCON 21.05 introduces Generic Shape Matching, which makes MVTec's industry-proven shape matching technologies even more user-friendly and future proof. By significantly reducing the number of required operators, users can now implement their solution much faster and a lot easier. Moreover, thanks to the unification of HALCON’s different shape matching methods into a single set of operators, users can now integrate new shape-matching-related features more smoothly.

hdevelop screenshot usability improvements
Screenshot of HDevelop

HDevelop usability improvements

HDevelop’s new window docking has been improved. Users have now more options to control the position where floating windows are opened. Until now, the top left corner of the main screen has been used as the origin. Now it’s also possible to select the upper left corner of the screen where HDevelop is located, or the upper left corner of HDevelop itself.

In addition, HDevelop now also includes a new docking feature called "Auto-hide”. This allows users to quickly shrink widgets they currently don't need into the sidebar and easily bring them back when needed.

Finally, graphics windows can now be grouped and organized in a much more convenient manner, in the new Canvas window.

HALCON Deep Learning Framework

HALCON 21.05 introduces a first version of the HALCON Deep Learning Framework. This framework allows experienced users to create their own models within HALCON. With this feature, experts can now realize even the most demanding and highly complex applications in HALCON without having to rely on pretrained networks or third-party frameworks.

Subpixel bar code reader improvements

HALCON’s subpixel bar code reader is capable of reading codes with very thin bars. In HALCON 21.05, the subpixel bar code reader has been improved regarding low-resolved codes. The decoding rate for those can now increase up to 50%.

Basic operators in 2D and 3D for fast and robust preprocessing

In HALCON 21.05, the 3D point cloud sampling now supports a new mode called “furthest point” which typically results in a more uniform sampling of a 3D object.

The 3D point cloud smoothing has been extended by a new mode that uses information from the XYZ-mappings. 3D point cloud smoothing can be used as a preprocessing step to smooth point clouds and remove noise. This mode usually leads to a much faster processing time.

Further improvements in HALCON 21.05 include general speedups of basic image operators.

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