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A trip to the hardware store for that latch set, window lock or a replacement part for your plumbing system should be a simple matter - or is it? Often, it isn't. But all that could change in the future. By BERNARD MALONE* A new way to store images OU WALK into the hardware shop with the confident air of someone who knows exactly what they want. Mere minutes later you have acquired a feeling of gross inadequacy after a sales assistant has destroyed your confidence by asking if the part is a left or right handed fitting? Do you want brass or mild steel? Do you want a flush or mortise fitting, or is it a 50mm or 85mm backset with recessed rebate in a bright annealed finish. We are all familiar with trying desperately to draw word pictures of what we need, only to leave the shop with a sense of frustration after our attempt at buying that special widget turns sour. All this may change soon as business recognises that today's low cost image database technology can be applied very easily to helping people make buying decisions. Image database technology? Think of it as video images and text stored in a computer for easy access by customers and sales staff. Such technology is now well within the reach of retail businesses. By using today's standard hardware with locally developed software, a typical trip to virtually any retail outlet would change dramatically. An image database * Bernard Malone is Assistant National Marketing Manager, Still Video Division, Canon Australia Pty Ltd. 16 SILICON CHIP Now when you go to the hardware store, you march up to a screen and let your fingers do the talking. The system will very quickly let you eliminate items that don't fit your need and come to the final choice. It may be a component for your new irrigation system, or a hard-to-describe latch set for that door you are just about to hang. Having established exactly what you need and having found that the item is indeed in stock, you could be on your way home in minutes. You would be happy and the retailer would have made a sale to a satisfied customer. Hang on - what retail establishment has the time, inclination and resources to do this? Isn't this a bit of crystal ball gazing? Definitely not. Such a system is currently available and at a relatively low cost. How does such a system work? It uses existing computer hardware, Canon's ION Still Video camera is an interesting marriage of CCD imager and floppy disc technology. The 50mm floppy stores the analog signals for 50 still pictures. Viewfinder Unit CCD Image Sensor Shutter Unit Display Panel Lens Battery Pack White Balance Sensor Disk Drive Unit Signal Processing Board Flash Signals from the ION camera can be viewed on a conventional PAL monitor and you can step through them frame by frame. Image quality is about the same as "still" frames from a typical HQ VHS video recorder. new video hardware , and software written especially for this application. Image databases include images and text together on a screen, where a few simple keyword prompts will search the images in the database. The search brings up a montage or individual images on screen that fit your "idea" of what you want to buy or examine. Image databases are well suited to establishments which have a very large range of high value products. Jewellery stores are a typical example. Traditionally, sales staff have to remove trays of small valuable items for a customer's inspection. A simple image database would enable the assistant or th e customer to key in a few simple "hints" of what they are look- ing for and a series of products that most closely fit the idea can be displayed. Having reduced the alternatives, it then becomes a much more practical matter for the shop assistant to present these for a final decision by th e customer. So how does the shop capture and handle these images? How quickly does the system respond to enquiry and how specific do the enquiry criteria need to be? The key to image capture and handling is Canon's new range of Still Video equipment, which overcomes the cost and speed problems associated with scanning images, and a newly developed image database software package. Images are taken directly into the system's software by using either the Canon ION Still Video camera or the Canon RE-552 Video Visualizer. Canon's still video camera The ION camera is quite small and light - it fits in the palm of your hand and will photograph 50 images on a 50mm floppy disc. The camera is APRIL 1991 17 in playback mode, it produces conventional PAL composite video signals. Any of the 50 images on a floppy disc may be displayed. Furthermore, any image may be erased and replaced by taking a new picture. So that is one way of acquiring video images for a database. The other way is with the Video Visualizer. Canon's Video Visualizer The complete Canon setup for image processing and storage in a database includes the ION camera, the Video Visualizer (which includes a built-in colour camera with a zoom lens) and an AT or 386 computer with a 40Mb hard disc and a VGA screen. ideal for capturing large images such as ladders, outdoor furniture, power tools or garden implements. However, it can be just as effective for photographing even small items down to 30cm shooting distance in macro mode. The Canon ION camera has a fixed focus 11mm fZ.8 lens which is equivalent to a 60mm lens in a 35mm camera. It focuses normally to one metre and down to 30cm when in the macro mode. There is a built-in flash with a choice of shooting modes. When set to "auto" , the flash will fire when the camera senses low light conditions. In the "on" mode, the flash will fire on every shot. A liquid crystal display (LCD) indicates the shooting mode, disc condition, track number, battery condition and self-timer. The camera is powered by a long-life rechargeable battery good for shooting 700 images without flash. On battery power, the camera will play back for 10 minutes. The battery charger supplied with the ION camera doubles as an AC adaptor for mains-powered playback. Record, playback and erase facilities are all contained in the small, lightweight unit. Exposure is adjusted automatically and it has selectable backlight exposure compensation. The ION 's CCD imager converts the lens image into video signals which are recorded onto the 50mm floppy disc in analog format. The CCD has 786 pixels horizontally, enhanced by an on-chip colour strip filter for accurate colour reproduction. High picture quality is achievable because the camera uses "high One of the benefits of the Still Video camera is that if band" video circuitry. some of the shots are unsatisfactory, you can just step through to the wanted pictures and shoot them again. When the camera is 18 SILICON CHIP The RE-552 Video Visualizer is a portable image input device which includes a built-in colour video camera mounted above a document table which is illuminated by fluorescent side lights. The camera has an 8x zoom lens and can be positioned for close-ups. Focus, exposure and white balance are all adjusted automatically. The Visualizer lets you transfer virtually any image into your database from photographs, negatives, "lifting" whole or part images from magazines, drawings, transparencies and even 3dimensional objects. The benefit of the Visualizer is that images of large items can be easily obtained from catalogs and illustrations, while a number of smaller items can be grouped in the one image. The Visualizer's camera: has a 420,000 pixel CCD sensor with horizontal resolution of 300 TV lines. The main operating controls are located along the front panel of the document table with LED indicators above each function control. There is a negative/ positive conversion button, a control for auto white balance, and a manual white balance control. You then have an exposure compensation control and manual and auto zoom controls. When the "normal" camera position is selected, you can focus on objects or document surfaces ranging from 335 x 250mm down to 43.3 x 32.4mm. If you want to capture smaller objects, down to around 33 x 25mm, the "close up" position can be selected. Three dimensional objects present no problem, as the depth of field of the camera in the "normal" position will enable good focus on objects about 50mm deep. The depth of field diminishes in the close up position. Database software The database software has been designed by OSR Digital Video Systems (well known for their Super Comms communications software) Specifications The ION is an electronic lens shutter camera which uses a 0.5-inch CCD with 786 pixels horizontally, with a total of 230,000 pixels. The video signal is PAL colour format which is recorded on a Still Video floppy disc. The camera's lens is a built-in fixed-focus type with a macro mechanism for extreme close-ups at 30cm. Viewfinder: Heal image secondary imaging finder Magnification: 0.55x Finder Coverage: 84% Dioptric Adjustment: -4 diopter to +2 diopter Light Metering: Feedback AE with external photometric sensor and CCD signal Exposure Mode: Program AE (1/30 sec, f2.8 to 1/500 sec, f22) Flash Sync Speed: 1/125 sec White Balance: Automatic tracking system Shooting Mode: Single image and continuous (3 images/sec) shooting Self-Timer: 10 second delay Video Output: 1Vp-p, 75Q unbalanced via 2.5mm mini-jack. Horizontal Resolution: Recording/playback - 300 TV lines (min.); playback - 350 lines (min.) Playback Function: Playback single image or continuous images (approx. 4 images/sec) by means of Forward or Reverse buttons. Playback automatically cancelled when single-image display exceeds 2 minutes (when using battery pack) or 15 minutes (when using battery charger) Erasure Function: Single image erasure. specifically for the storage and display of images which can be corn~ bined with text and field information. This allows the user to define all database categories from flat field to multi-database search fields. If a customer in a hardware store was searching for a door latch set, for example, the user may establish a prime search using the field criteria. For example, the input "door", "deadlock", "brass" and "stainless steel " would invoke the database to allow the searcher to see all products related to those criteria. Free form text and word search allows the user to search for items which may not be easily described by the criteria. Alternatively, the searcher can simply call up the database, for instance "door accessories", and browse through the multi-screen images and select the one he wants. "Multi-layering" is also possible if the user wants to be really clever. For example, the searcher calls up an image of a "door" and the image would have several "highlight" points such as "lock", "handle", etc. The searcher would simply click with the mouse on "lock" and the database would then display multi -screen images of the items in the "lock" database. Rolling slide show Another facility of the image database is its ability to be used by a retailer to create a rolling slide show of products while the system is not in use - great for in-store promotions. This can be done easily by designating a database called, "new products" which would immediately commence a continuous display of all new lines in the shop. Because video is being used, and because of the simplicity of using the Canon ION Still Video camera, setting up and editing of the image database is simple and time effective. Unlike scanning, the user can very quickly take a picture of the product and quickly enter it into the image database with a frame grabber, in- eluded in the database software package. Again , because video is being used, the amount of storage needed for an image is much less than with scanning. An average of 200Kb per file is all the space needed , so a simple complete system with 100Mb of hard disc storage will store up to 500 images/files , including text and field criteria. One of the major advantages of the OSR database is the ability to display and view images on any VGA screen without the need for a frame grabber. OSR's colour conversion techniques mean that when the image is captured by the Canon ION camera, it is automatically converted to a VGA format. This means the user can have multiaccess systems without the need to have a costly frame grabber in each computer. The speed at which images can be retrieved depends on the computer system being used. However, a typical enquiry from a basic system would take only a few seconds. This very sophisticated but simple to use image database technology, combined w ith Canon's new Still Video technology, will benefit a wide range of users. In fact, any organisation or individual that needs to identify, store and retrieve items from a high volume of images or objects will find the system extremely effective and surprisingly economical and easy to operate. Paying the piper A complete image database system comprising a Canon ION (Image Online Network) Still Video camera and database software and frame grabber board will cost around $4500 . If you don't already have a computer to run the system, you will need a standard AT or 386 computer with 640K of RAM, 40 megabytes of hard disc and a VGA screen. The cost of the Canon ION Still Video camera is $1300. The Video Visualizer is $5200, while the image database, including the frame grabber board, is $3200. In addition to viewing images on screen, by adding a computer printer to the system, the user gains the ability to produce hard copy of images or complete database files. This can be done in either colour or black and white, depending on the printer. SC APRIL 1991 19