What's New In HALCON 6.0?
Outstanding features of HALCON 6.0 - the newest version of
MVTec's high-performance real-time software for machine vision -
are the support of multiprocessor computers and
the ability to recognize objects by
using their shape.
Moreover, all extension packages of
HALCON 5.2 have been included so that they are an integral part of
HALCON 6.0.
For a detailed list of all changes in HALCON 6.0, please have a
look on the release
notes.
Parallel HALCON
From release 6.0 on, HALCON can be used in two modes: Standard HALCON is optimized for single-processor computers. In contrast, Parallel HALCON actively exploits the power of multiprocessor computers to speed up machine vision applications.
Like standard HALCON, Parallel HALCON can be used in two ways:
You can integrate the corresponding operator libraries in your own
C++ or C programs, or you can use Parallel HDevelop, the parallelized
version of HDevelop.
Parallel HALCON is available for Windows NT & 2000, Linux,
and Sun Solaris. There is no limit of the number of processors which
Parallel HALCON can make use of.
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130.5/71.6/51.2/41.2 ms on 1/2/3/4 Pentium II Xeon (400 MHz), Linux, image size: 1280x960 |
If Parallel HALCON detects more than one processor in a computer, it automatically parallelizes HALCON image processing operators without the need of rewriting a single line of code. This means that existing HDevelop-, C++, or C-programs can be used unchanged and nevertheless can draw advantage of the advanced performance of multiprocessor hardware.
Moreover, Parallel HALCON actively supports multithreaded programming by being reentrant. This means that a multithreaded application can start more than one HALCON operator which are processed concurrently (in parallel). Note that Standard HALCON - the HALCON version for single-processor systems - is only threadsafe, but not reentrant, i.e., several operators may be started at once, but they will be processed under mutual exclusion against each other. It thus conforms to the behaviour of former HALCON releases.
Shape-Based Pattern Matching
Another outstanding new feature of HALCON 6.0 is shape-based pattern
matching. This extends HALCON's pattern matching algorithms based
on gray values by real-time methods for locating objects by using
their shape. The latter not only works correctly with objects placed
in any orientation and any rotation, but is also
extremely robust against occlusion, clutter, and
arbitrary illumination changes.
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Thus, the use of complex methods for locating pre-learned objects
can now be replaced by this powerful and widely appliable
shape-based matching technique. HALCON also provides a GUI tool named HMatchIt for easily adjusting the matching algorithm to the needs of your application. |
Included Extension Packages
HALCON 6.0 contains all the following extension packages of HALCON 5.2 as an integral part:
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"affine" |
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package for working with affine transformations |
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"barcode2d" |
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package for finding and decoding 2-D bar codes |
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"distance" |
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package for calculating the distance transform of a region |
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"grayfeat" |
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package for calculating shape features based on gray value moments |
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"tileimage" |
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package for combining multiple images into one large image |
Availability
MVTec HALCON 6.0 has been released on December 1, 2000. The latest revision (HALCON 6.0.4) has been released on August 1, 2003.
