Machine vision software on mobile devices ----Wide range of applications for character and object recognition

Munich, January 27, 2015 - MVTec Software GmbH (www.mvtec.com), a leading manufacturer of standard machine vision software, has made HALCON software library ready for mobile use. With "HALCON Embedded for Android", the software now also runs on portable devices such as tablets, phablets, and smartphones that use the Android operating system. For this purpose, MVTec successfully tested HALCON Embedded on different Android systems. On request, MVTec will develop a customized Android version that is perfectly tailored to individual requirements. This version benefits companies that develop professional imaging applications based on the Android platform. It also lays the groundwork for additional application scenarios, including those for private users that use the advantages of imaging in a wide range of applications for object or text recognition in everyday situations.

Automated, mobile character recognition

The mobile HALCON version opens up a wide range of new application possibilities. For example, the technology can be used for reliable optical character recognition (OCR). One practical scenario in this context is mobile scanning and the recording of text and character information, such as reading power and water meters with a smartphone. Other possible scenarios include mobile recognition and the recording of street names for navigation applications or of vehicle license plate numbers to speed up the check-out process for car rentals, for example. Using a suitable application, it is also possible to scan sales data with a mobile device and transfer it directly to company software. Other possible options include applications for industrial plant maintenance. For example, specific components in control cabinets may be reliably identified for replacement purposes using imaging software. And there's more: service technicians benefit from a multimedia manual. They can easily recognize assemblies and components with a mobile device and use this information to prepare instructions for certain maintenance processes or access additional information online.

"By developing HALCON Embedded for Android, we have addressed the growing importance of mobile applications in the work environment and in everyday life. It is also important to include complex applications in mobile devices. Thanks to HALCON Embedded for Android, such applications are now also possible for complex imaging scenarios," says Dr. Gerhard Blahusch, Director of Engineering with MVTec. "A wide range of applications is possible. When customers have special requirements for processing images on mobile Android systems, we are happy to support them in developing customized and tailored solutions. Our technology is ideally suited for use in embedded systems that work with the popular ARM processor architecture. Providing HALCON on the Android platform is the next logical step in this development," Blahusch adds.

Images and captions for the press release can be found at www.mvtec.com/en/news-press/article/detail/mvtec-launches-halcon-for-android.

For more information about "HALCON Embedded for Android", please visit www.halcon.com/embedded/halcon-embedded-android.html.

About HALCON
HALCON is the comprehensive standard software for machine vision with an integrated development environment (IDE) that is used worldwide. It enables cost savings and improved time to market: HALCONs flexible architecture facilitates rapid development of machine vision, medical imaging, and image analysis applications. HALCON provides outstanding performance and a comprehensive support of multi-core platforms and special instructions sets like AVX2, as well as GPU acceleration. It serves all industries, with a library used in tens of thousands of applications in all areas of imaging like blob analysis, morphology, matching, measuring, identification and 3D vision. HALCON secures your investment by supporting a wide range of operating systems and providing interfaces to hundreds of industrial cameras and frame grabbers, also for standards like GenICam, GigE Vision, and USB3 Vision. www.halcon.com

About MVTec
MVTec is a leading manufacturer of standard software for machine vision. MVTec products are used in all demanding areas of imaging: Semi-conductor industry, web inspection, quality control and inspection applications in general, medicine, 3D vision and surveillance. MVTec, with its head office in Munich (Germany), has more than 30 established distributors worldwide and in addition, MVTec, LLC works out of Boston, MA (USA). www.mvtec.com