Machine Vision (MV) is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) technique that is getting a lot of attention over the past decade or so, and in which there has been some notable achievements. It is the most important area necessary to advance the state-of-the art of industrial robots, and it is likely that MV will have an even greater impact in the area of automated inspection. Although the field is still in its infancy, a rapid growth in industrial vision applications is expected for this decade.
The purpose of this paper is to define and distinguish this area from other fields related to computer vision. The paper also, discusses the role of MV in the area of automated inspection in the metal working industry with emphasis on the necessity and the role of MV in the advance of the state-of-the art of industrial robots, thus clarifying one of the
most important key technologies of the high level automated production within the factory of the future. The paper also, clarifies some aspects in MV such as the matter of resolution, how computer recognition works, modelling machine vision, etc...