Machine vision has been used to ensure quality in manufacturing for more than 30 years. In that time span, there has been nothing short of a revolution in imaging technology and in manufacturing. Costs are dropping and solutions are becoming simpler -- but still, the vision industry has much work ahead if it is to become a necessity on the factory floor. In the 1970s, photonics manufacturers had to explain machine vision -- that you really could take data from a television camera and use computers to process and analyze the pictures. The early 1980s saw inflated expectations for vision. Venture capital flowed into fledgling companies, making them look much more successful than they actually were. In some cases, entire companies were propped up for several years by venture capital, not by generated revenue…