MVTec and BMG bring Halcon machine vision to Bosch Rexroth's ctrlX OS

Nexeed Integrated Vision, an app from Bosch Manufacturing Solutions (BMG), runs Halcon procedures on ctrlX OS. MVTec, Bosch Rexroth and BMG have all become ctrlX World partners, joining the platform's partner network. Design News, which reported the collaboration on November 5, said it is aimed at machine builders, automation manufacturers, system integrators and manufacturing companies that want machine vision inside their automation solutions.

The timing is what stands out. On October 13, Metrology News reported that evopro systems engineering, a Bertrandt subsidiary, had entered a ctrlX OS OEM collaboration with Bosch Rexroth to bring its VISIONWEBx platform and software-defined camera technology into the same ecosystem. For machine builders that standardize on Bosch Rexroth controls, the two announcements suggest vision on ctrlX OS could come from more than one supplier.

In fact, neither one is the first. HD Vision Systems joined ctrlX World in June 2021 with a vision suite in the ctrlX App Store, according to Bosch Rexroth's announcement at the time. A builder's question is no longer whether ctrlX can do vision. It is which vision stack to run on it, and what each one costs to integrate, license and support.

Who does what in the Halcon stack

The work splits cleanly. MVTec supplies the image processing. BMG's Nexeed Integrated Vision connects MVTec's software to Bosch Rexroth's operating environment and to the controls themselves. Bosch Rexroth provides ctrlX OS and the partner ecosystem around it.

Where the code runs is the important part. Industrial ecosystems give developers a shared framework for building, deploying and maintaining automation apps, and the partnership aims to bring vision into that framework, so a camera-based check becomes one more app beside the machine's other functions.

According to Design News, the combination is aimed at general automation as well as quality inspection, component identification and robot guidance. Bosch Rexroth's Carina Heil, who leads the company's Business Operations Automation Software group, described it as the platform doing what it was built for. She said ctrlX OS is at its best when it lets different technologies come together on one shared platform with little effort. As she put it, vision now comes in through Nexeed Integrated Vision, and users can pair it there with other automation functions.

MVTec's pitch centers on access. Dr. Maximilian Lückenhaus, MVTec's director of marketing and business development, said industrial ecosystems like the ctrlX OS Ecosystem give users a new and simple way to get the benefits of machine vision. That suggests MVTec views a controller platform's app store as another route for Halcon to reach automation buyers who might never shop with a vision specialist.

BMG's role is easy to overlook, and it deserves a closer look. On its own site, the Bosch unit describes a machine vision group that develops, builds and supports systems for optical inspection and process control, working with its nine locations worldwide. It says its systems can be used in the laboratory, in small series and single-part production, and on production lines with short cycle times.

BMG also offers a training program at its training center in Stuttgart, at its locations worldwide or at the customer's site, so customer staff can operate and maintain its solutions. So the company writing the bridge between Halcon and the controller also builds and supports inspection machines.

The same site fills in the rest of the picture. BMG runs feasibility studies and process development in its labs, and its vision engineers work alongside its mechanical engineers so inspection and parts handling are designed together. It also sells an in-house AI Suite that adds AI to classic image processing. Experts can feed their process knowledge into the inspection decision without programming, and labeling, training and verification happen in the office, away from the inspection system.

Three vision stacks, one controller

Halcon via Nexeed is the newest arrival, and it lands next to two approaches that start from different places. evopro starts from the camera. HD Vision Systems starts from AI-based object recognition and handling.

evopro VISIONWEBx and evoVIU VIUx

evopro's approach is built around a software-defined camera. Its evoVIU VIUx platform separates the camera hardware from the software and can be extended with apps. Metrology News sets that against conventional smart cameras and says the platform combines machine vision, AI, automation and control functions in one system. According to the same report, VISIONWEBx will be offered through ctrlX World as a development and runtime environment for vision applications on ctrlX OS.

Steffen Winkler, head of sales for Bosch Rexroth's Automation & Electrification Solutions unit, said users can choose hardware ranging from software-defined cameras and edge controllers to industrial PCs and servers, while developing their vision application only once. evopro argues that putting vision, edge computing, AI analytics and PLC functions on one platform means fewer hardware components, less cabling and faster commissioning. It also says savings in space and system cost depend on the use case.

The partners describe the combination as groundwork for what they call Physical AI: systems that see their surroundings, interpret what they see and act on it directly. Stefan Kraus, evopro's head of product development, said bringing vision, AI and control together on one platform enables "applications that previously required significantly greater integration effort." Target uses run from quality inspection and AI-based defect detection to robotics, pick-and-place and edge AI. Bertrandt and Bosch Rexroth also plan to expand their engineering collaboration.

HD Vision Systems LumiScan

HD Vision Systems is the incumbent. When it joined ctrlX World in 2021, Bosch Rexroth said the company's vision suite, built on light field technology and deep learning, would be sold in the ctrlX App Store as an image processing app for the ctrlX CORE controller. The suite covers visually guided object localization, tracking and detection, QR code scanning, and interfaces to standard area scan cameras.

The two companies also described a joint use case that shows how the controller-side workflow runs. A 2D camera connected to ctrlX CORE over Ethernet detects components. The vision suite identifies them, works out their position and gives a Cartesian robot the data to grasp them accurately, then stores the results in a predefined raster for downstream processing. CEO Dr. Christoph Garbe said the company was backing the ctrlX approach of "integrating components for different tasks from different suppliers into one overarching system."

Its current store listing covers the training side. The LumiScan Training Framework trains neural networks for computer vision tasks, including object recognition. The app retrains existing networks or trains them from scratch, converts them to ONNX, and generates an inference that can be loaded into LumiScan's AI Object Matching Feature. It works on Windows and Linux.

Develop once, but inside one stack

The strongest objection to reading this as a simple menu comes from the portability pitch. Winkler's develop-once promise, as Metrology News reported it, describes VISIONWEBx running on different hardware. The sources don't describe moving an application between VISIONWEBx and Halcon. That suggests the operating system's hardware independence makes it easier to swap controllers but doesn't make vision apps interchangeable.

Bosch Rexroth's own framing in 2021 points the same way. Hans Michael Krause, product manager for ctrlX World, said users can "download the specific Bosch Rexroth or third-party automation solutions that they need" from the ecosystem. That's a store model, where buyers pick an app for a job. A first vision app could be easy to install and still be costly to replace once an application has been built in that vendor's tools.

What a ctrlX vision app actually costs to run

The LumiScan listing gives the clearest public view of licensing, and it has a recurring layer. In the first year, a buyer purchases the one-time base license plus a one-year subscription. After that, only the subscription renews. The key, the base license and the subscription must all be valid for the app to run.

The listing gives material numbers R911427110 (XACC-0-USBVIS) for the LumiScan Key USB dongle, R911423891 for the base license and R911423892 for the annual subscription, and says to order items via the ctrlX Configurator under ctrlX Software > Accessories. One LumiScan USB key can be extended to cover additional HD Vision Systems products. For a procurement team, that suggests a recurring cost rather than a single capital purchase.

Training brings its own hardware bill. The prerequisites look like a GPU workstation spec, not a controller spec, and name an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER. Every training parameter also has to be set in JSON settings before a run.

Windows shops have one more thing to check. The listing warns that Windows 10 updates KB5074105 and KB5077181 may cause compatibility problems with the encryption in HD Vision Systems' Windows engineering apps. So the real cost of an AI vision app on ctrlX includes a training machine and the IT upkeep around it, not only the controller license.

That split between office and plant floor isn't unique to HD Vision. BMG's AI Suite also keeps labeling and training in the office, separate from the inspection system. That suggests buyers comparing AI-based stacks should budget for two environments: one where models are trained and one where they run.

Integrators get the first test

Design News states the integrator case directly: when system integrators join vision and control, the integration cuts the programming work involved. If Nexeed Integrated Vision reduces that work as much as the partners describe, integrators will notice it in quoting and commissioning hours before plant owners notice it anywhere else. The benefit is largest for integrators who already deliver Halcon applications and Bosch Rexroth controls as separate pieces.

evopro makes a similar promise to the same buyers. Metrology News lists automation and system integrators among its main audiences, and its pitch is less cabling and commissioning work. With two stacks claiming lower integration effort and a third bringing years of controller-side robot guidance, the useful test is a real project. Price a representative inspection or pick-and-place job on each stack, counting programming hours, licenses and training hardware.