Virtual Measurement Laboratory

The Company

ViLab (short for "Virtualnaia Izmeritelnaia Laboratoria" which is Russian for Virtual Measurement Laboratory) is a research and development company based in Kaluga city in Russia. The company specializes in virtualization technologies for optical (machine vision) industrial metrology systems.

Mission and background

After more than 10 years of commissioning (sytem integration) of industrial machine vision metrology systems of world-renowned brands  at automotive and other factories all around the world we realized that there is a huge irrational component to our business. It is the lack of possibity to simulate and therefore to do offline programming of very core of such systems - the machine vision equipment itself.

Deployment of any industrial system is difficult. Mostly because it includes international travel for large teams of specialists, working in rough conditions of factories under construction, necesity to fit the commissioning process into short gaps of factory construction or production process on-site.

Fortunately there are means of optimizing this process - simulation and offline programming software that allow to do more work in advance, off-site and less work on-site within the tight schedules of on-site activities. Such software usually exists for (provided by manufacturers of) most of the components of a metrology system: industrial robots, programmable logical controllers (PLC), etc... But not for machine vision measurement devices!

Our mission is to provide simulation and off-line programming software and services for the world of machine vision-based industrial metrology, to unleash unprecedented oportunities for effective commissioning, comprehensive testing, operating personnel training for these systems.

Our process, products and services

Our reseach and development process is aimed to create accurate physical simulations of optical lens and camera systems comprising optical measurement sensors used in popular machine vision industrial metrology systems. The simulations use Computer-Generated Imagery (computer 3D graphic) software tools to create virtual worlds with measurement objects so that the target metrology system connected to that virtual world works as if it were in a real one. Aside from imagery generation other aspects of a real metrology system environment are simulated as well. Among them are interfaces to other components of the system, such as industrial robots and PLC, temperature and mechanical effect on the measurement objects, the optical sensor itself and on the robot carrying it. Various aspects of the monitored production process like dimentional variability of produced parts, well known patterns of such variabilities. The software allows to perform vrious tests of the target measurement system in simulated environment, such as repeatability tests, testing various measurement algorithms (methods), specific calculations like alignments, process quality control and quality stop algorithms. 

Trusted by automotive factories around the world