GenICam (for Halcon / Aurora Vision)

As the adoption of machine-vision based applications is in constant growth, LIPS® continuously incorporates and ensure third-party software and frameworks compatibility for Machine Vision standards. In this section, the GenICam standard is described with examples of Halcon (MVTec) and Aurora Vision/Adaptive Solution(Zebra Technologies).

GenICam (abbreviated for Generic Interface for Cameras) is a generic programming interface for machine vision (industrial) cameras. The goal of the standard is to decouple industrial camera interfaces technology from the user application programming interface (API). GenICam is administered by the European Machine Vision Association (EMVA). The work on the standard began in 2003 and the first module in GenICam, i.e., GenApi, was ratified in 2006 whereas the final module, i.e., GenTL was ratified in 2008.

GenICam provides support for five basic functions:

• Configuring the camera - This function could support a range of camera features such as frame size, acquisition speed, pixel format, gain, image offset, etc.

• Grabbing images - This function will create access channels between the camera and the user interface and initiates receiving images.

• Graphical user interface - This function enables user GUI interface to seamlessly talk to the camera(s)

• Transmitting extra data - This function enables cameras to send extra data on top of the image data. Typical examples could be histogram information, time stamp, area of interest in the frame, etc.

• Delivering events - This function enables cameras to talk to the application through