Scalable smart cameras for inline inspection - Systematic design of cloud based image processing

Smart cameras are an essential tool in industrial manufacturing. However, while the optical systems in smart cameras can remain fully functional for a long time, the computing hardware rapidly becomes out-dated. This article discusses how to augment camera systems with cloud-based computing resources in order to flexibly integrate image-processing algorithms with higher resource demands in manufacturing processes despite the limitations of the smart camera. We present a system architecture and its implementation which is suitable for scalable cloud processing of both constant and fluctuating workloads.