Michael Beising, CEO, EVT, said eggs on a conveyor belt are not in any order and sometimes touch each other and sometimes not.
White eggs on a black background
With Egg Counter, the eggs on the production line are captured as images by an industrial camera and are separated from each other and their background so that it can register and count the objects accurately.
He told FoodProductionDaily, EyeVision uses a series of filters, which separates and counts the eggs using an intuitive drag-and-drop programme and the objects are seen as white eggs on a black background.
“We created Egg Counter following a direct request from a customer who builds these machines because they wanted to make it more accurate and detect the size of eggs directly,” he said.
“With our customer, we built a rigid system for easy installation in the machines as well as an add-on for existing machines. So we see a big market for an easy egg count and measurement, to improve the quality before packaging”.
China and Germany
Beising added the EyeVisionis a standard software, which can be adapted to different industries
“The method for counting objects which are the same in size, shape and colour on a conveyor belt was developed for a Chinese company. The Egg Counter was for a German company,” he said.
“But you can use the EyeVision software for all sorts of applications: pattern matching, surface inspection, measurement technology, 3D-Inspection, code reading (bar code, DMC, QR), OCR/OCV, robot guidance, LED, colour, display inspection, inspection of wafers and semiconductors, WEB inspection, and so forth.
“In the future, it is possible that camera-based systems can be used to determine the volume and also the weight of the eggs.”
EVT customers include the food and beverage industry, automotive, semiconductor, electronic, print, plastics, paper and cosmetics.
Most of its customers are from Europe, but the company has distributors in Asia and the US.
'Egg filter'
Beising said the way the technology works is via a smart camera with the EyeVision software and a special filter tool to make it easier to detect the eggs.
“Based on this ‘egg-filter’, we find the eggs and determine the size to send the data to the next system to count it, as well as the position to send the egg to the correct package,” he added.
The company has also launched the BrainLight series intelligent illumination software.
For example, BrainLight R is a ringlight, which not only controls the illumination formations of LEDs, but tells the camera to only capture one image per formation.