HALCON

HALCON is a commercial machine vision software library developed by MVTec Software GmbH. It provides a comprehensive, vendor-supported toolkit for developing image-based inspection and automation applications. The library supports 2D and 3D vision, image acquisition, processing, analysis, and interpretation, and is designed for reliability and performance in industrial settings.

Its operator library includes thousands of functions for pre-processing, geometry, measurement, feature detection, segmentation, morphological operations, blob and edge analysis, and pattern matching, as well as tools for 3D vision, calibration, pose estimation, and metrology. It includes OCR and machine-learning-based recognition, and supports integration of deep learning components.

HALCON provides HDevelop, a dedicated environment for rapid prototyping and scripting, and APIs for C, C++, C#, Python, and MATLAB. It runs on Windows and Linux and supports multi-core execution and GPU acceleration for many operators, enabling high-throughput processing required in manufacturing. The architecture emphasizes portability and reproducibility across hardware platforms.

Used across industries such as automotive, electronics, consumer goods, and pharmaceuticals, HALCON enables automated inspection, robot guidance, part localization, defect detection, surface inspection, and metrology-based quality control. It is distributed with extensive documentation, training materials, and customer support as part of its commercial product line.