and angular orientation of the wafer 100 to a reference location or position so that an automated material transfer system like a robotic end effector can accurately pick up and transfer the wafer using the determined relative positional information in the wafer alignment process using the present invention a machine vision system 150 acquires at least one image of the wafer on the alignment stage using the camera 120 in an illustrative embodiment the machine vision system is a personal computer with a frame grabber like the mvs 8100 pci frame grabber available from cognex corporation the camera 120 can be an rs 170 ccir industry standard 640 u00d7 480 monochrome camera coupled to the machine vision system 150 using standard video interconnection cables alternatively the camera 120 and the machine vision system 150 can be an integrated sensor for example an in sight 1700 series wafer reader also available from cognex corporation where the functionality of the camera 120 is internally coupled to the machine vision system 150 in a clean room environment the integrated camera system solution will be preferred the acquired image of the wafer 100 backlit by the electroluminescent lamp 110 is represented by fig3 an apparent edge is visible in the image between the electroluminescent lamp 110 and the wafer 100 the lamp 110 will appear bright while the wafer 100 will appear dark using boundary tracking.