Industrial automation applications can benefit from the use of CogniMem^™ technology to assist human effort where hard physical, monotonous, or dangerous requirements demand the augmented use of technology. The CogniMem neurons can be trained to recognize discrete objects, textures or patterns. Its non-linear classifier is ideal to cope with fuzzy or ill-defined problems such as food and surface inspection. Depending on the application, the recognition engines can be configured to identity and classify objects, but also to report novelty or anomalies.