We sat down with Anderson at Clearview’s Industrial Automation Centre of Excellence to learn more about machine vision advances, how AI is moving from buzzword to practical tool, and why knowledge, not hardware, is now the biggest barrier to adoption.
Can you break down the main types of machine vision technologies currently used in industrial environments?
Machine vision is often discussed as a single technology, but in practice it spans several distinct capabilities.
First of all, there’s advanced inspection. “Here, we can use metrology to create a full 3D measurement of a part,” Anderson explains.
In practical terms, that means generating a detailed three-dimensional profile of a manufactured component and checking its peaks, troughs and critical dimensions against specification.
“There are a couple of things that have happened in the last few years to make something like this easier. The hardware that's used here, a laser triangulation device, is more affordable and is more mainstream. Then, you've got the software that's bringing everything together, allowing complex manufacturing inspections like this to be solvable on the factory floor.”
Read the full article in DPA's March 2026 issue
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