Statistical pattern recognition of two-dimensional images began to be studied in the 1950s.
Roberts began his research on 3D machine vision in the 1960s.
In the mid-1970s, the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory officially launched the "Machine Vision" course.
Starting in the 1980s, a global research boom began, and machine vision experienced rapid development, with new concepts and theories constantly emerging.
Machine vision remains a very active research field, with related disciplines including image processing, computer graphics, pattern recognition, artificial intelligence, and artificial neural networks.
The Development History of Machine Vision in China:
Before 1990, there were only a few laboratories in universities and research institutes that studied image processing and pattern recognition.
In the early 1990s, some engineers from these research institutions founded their own vision companies and developed the first generation of image processing products, such as grayscale image acquisition cards based on the ISA bus and some simple image processing software libraries. Their products were used in university laboratories and some industrial settings, enabling people to do some basic image processing and analysis work.
The period from 1990 to 1998 was the initial stage. During this period, the actual market sales of machine vision systems were negligible. Major international machine vision manufacturers had not yet entered the Chinese market. Since 1998, an increasing number of electronics and semiconductor factories, including those invested in by Hong Kong and Taiwan, have been established in Guangdong and Shanghai. Complete production lines and advanced equipment incorporating machine vision were introduced to China.
The period from 1998 to 2002 is defined as the introduction phase of the machine vision concept. During this stage, many well-known vision equipment suppliers, such as Matsushita, Omron, Cognex, DVT, CCS, Data Translation, Matrix, and Coreco, began to seek local partners in the Chinese market, but qualified local partners were extremely rare. For example, Beijing Hollysys Electric Technology Co., Ltd. was once selected as a major agent or solution provider by five foreign companies.
From 2002 to the present, we call this the development period of machine vision, during which China's machine vision industry has shown a rapid growth trend.
