Basler Presents pylon AI, a New AI Image Analysis Software for Complex Applications

Sept. 24, 2024 - Basler AG, international manufacturer of high-quality machine vision hardware and software, is expanding its proven pylon Software Suite with pylon AI. pylon AI are image analysis functions with artificial intelligence algorithms that, unlike conventional algorithms, can solve more complex vision tasks like classification and semantic segmentation. The new performance benchmarking integrated into the software is unique: pylon AI displays the expected performance of an AI model for a variety of processors and AI accelerators. Frame rate, latency, accuracy of results and power consumption can thus be compared. These are important parameters for the performance of the subsequent image processing application.

The new software allows users to create robust image analysis pipelines—from image acquisition to deployment in the target application—using drag-and-drop programming. The interface to the target application is also particularly user-friendly, thanks to the Recipe Code Generator function and proven pylon APIs. The new image analysis software consists of the pylon AI Platform for Machine Learning Operations (MLOps) and four pylon AI vTools (plug-ins that execute the AI models).

pylon AI platform

Thanks to the open ONNX format for deep learning models, numerous common AI frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow and NVIDIA TAO can be used. With the platform, the classes of the AI model are assigned to the image data. The AI models are then optimized (model conversion and quantization are possible) and the processing hardware is benchmarked for the best performance.

pylon AI vTools as plug-ins in the pylon Software Suite

The AI model optimized on the pylon AI platform can be loaded into the pylon AI vTools online or offline via drag-and-drop. The plug-ins enable complex applications with changing environmental conditions such as object detection, classification and semantic and instance segmentation. They can be combined with the existing pylon vTools for image processing, which are based on classic algorithms.

Overall, customers benefit from greatly reduced development costs and a high level of flexibility and transparency. "pylon AI provides an easy entry into AI-driven applications with high cost efficiency. Integrated into the pylon Software Suite, we now offer the complete image processing route on a single user interface as a full-range provider: from image acquisition to image processing and image analysis. We also supply the appropriate machine vision hardware for the high AI readout speeds," said Pauline Lux, product group architect at Basler.