In this state, the system is characterized by the following properties:

  • The vision system has received a StartContinuous command to begin the execution of a continuous job
  • The vision system collects sensor data (i.e. acquiring single or multiple images, possibly awaiting triggers, often in hardware) and processes this in a continuously ongoing fashion.
  • Results can be pulled from the internal result-store by the methods detailed in Section 7.5 (depending on the capabilities of the system).

Note that the above description illustrates a typical behavior. The vision system is, however, in no way obliged to perform any particular operation – like image acquisition or processing – in this state. It can do completely different things or nothing at all before returning to Ready state. The point is rather that the difference between ContinuousExecution state and Ready state lies in the availability of the required resources for starting a job.

If an error is detected which suspends normal operation, the system will change to the Error state in the VisionStateMachine.

This state can be left in the following ways:

All method-triggered transitions can also occur automatically upon an internal decision of the system.

This state can be a composite state with an optional VisionStepModelStateMachineType SubStateMachine.