Automate 2011 shows synergy of shows

I don’t know whether Automate 2011 (held at McCormick Place in Chicago, March 21-24) was a success for every exhibitor and attendee, but it had all the necessary elements. Unofficial numbers for the show were 170 exhibitors and over 7500 attendees.

The floor traffic, which waxed and waned during the four days of the show, seemed to consist of many system integrators, tool manufacturers, and warehouse system providers—ideal traffic for the show and attributable to the very large, co-located ProMat show on materials handling. Indeed, walking around ProMat was a bit like walking through a display of machine vision in action.

Having recently completed a market report on the use of vision in service robots in, among other applications, warehousing, it was great to see the robots at Kiva Systems gliding eerily around the floor, using embedded smart camera technology to read Data Matrix codes on the floor and to position themselves below shelves that they then picked up and moved to a human who would pick out desired parts.

In additional good news for the machine vision industry, the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) presented the preliminary results of its annual statistics for industrial robots, including vision-guided robots. In 2010, with more than 115,000 industrial robots shipped, the number of units sold worldwide almost doubled from 2009, the lowest year since the early 1990s.

Here are some slides from the IFR presentation, which show trends from 2001 to 2011, and the strength of markets in Asia, especially in Korea. An article on the subject explores the trends in different regions and industries (click on images to enlarge).

Will earthquake impact machine vision component supply?

News about the supply chain of vision and electronic components coming from Japan has so far been tentative and sporadic. The ongoing effects of the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant failures have dominated the news but indications of specific global economic consequences are emerging.

A New York Times article today investigates some of the impacts, noting that a Texas Instruments plant north of Tokyo that make A/D chips and accounts for 10% of TI's global output was damaged and won't resume full production until September. Toshiba has closed some of its production lines, potentially affecting the availability of NAND flash chips.

The port of Sendai-Shiogama is heavily damaged. It is the 13th largest Japanese port in container shipments and of particular importance to Sony, Canon, and Pioneer. FedEx shut service to much of eastern Japan, including Tokyo, following the earthquake but now reports resumption with some service delays.

Please let me know if you have any related information - cholton@pennwell.com.

Hummingbird with video camera

A new surveillance device may be arriving at your bird feeder soon. Yesterday, AeroVironment (Monrovia, CA), announced that it had got its Nano Hummingbird to precisely hover and fly forward, fast. Weighing two thirds of an ounce, including batteries and video cameras, the prototype was built as part of the DARPA Nano Air Vehicle program.

The final concept demonstrator is capable of climbing and descending vertically, flying sideways left and right, flying forward and backward, as well as rotating clockwise and counter-clockwise, under remote control. During the demonstration the Nano Hummingbird flew in and out of a building through a normal-size doorway.



The hand-made prototype aircraft has a wingspan of 16 cm (6.5 inches) and can fitted with a removable body fairing, which is shaped to have the appearance of a hummingbird. The company, which makes a variety of unmanned aerial vehicles used by the military, says the Nano is larger and heavier than an average hummingbird, but is smaller and lighter than the largest hummingbird currently found in nature.

Vision Systems Design is publishing a market report on vision for such UAVs and other service robots. For more information, click here.

New Year - New Web site

The redesign of the Vision Systems Design Web site is the first in a series of new developments for 2011. Our address remains: www.vision-systems.com, but you will find a new look and numerous enhancements to help engineers and system integrators make use of machine vision and image processing products and technologies.

One of the key improvements is the visibility of our topic centers on any page of the site in the navigation bar. These topic centers focus on Factory Automation, Non-Industrial Vision, Cameras, Boards & Software, Lighting & Optics, and Robotics.

You'll also find more videos and a new video player, and the addition of Editorial Digests on relevant subjects such as 3-D imaging and solar cell manufacturing.

In addition, you will easily find the current issue and archives of our magazine, more links to our Buyers Guide and Industrial Camera Directory, faster page load times, and a link to OptoIQ, which is the portal site for several PennWell publications related to lasers, photonics, bio-optics, and research.

Please let me know what you think of the new site and what other changes we might make.

Best wishes for the New Year.

Conard Holton
Editor in Chief
Vision Systems Design
cholton@pennwell.com

VISION 2010 – Parting views

After three demanding days on the show floor and travel home from Stuttgart (in many cases delayed by a fierce storm over northern Europe), it’s clear that VISION 2010 was a major success, a relief to the organizers and exhibitors, and a good omen for 2011.


(Figure: The Mid-Size Robocup Team: Tech United Eindhoven put on a show)

In no particular order, here are some observations:

- This tradeshows is alive and well. It drew a record 6800 visitors, 1600 exhibitors, and 323 exhibiting companies. Forty four percent of the exhibitors came from outside Germany, primarily from the US and South Korea. Thirty five percent of the visitors came from outside Germany

- Most companies reported strong to torrid growth in the past months. Basler, for example, grew very fast but expects sales will soften in the first and second quarters of 2011, before strengthening again in the second half of next year.

- A price war is being waged in some lower-ends of the camera world. Several of the competing vendors are German and continue making their cameras in Germany despite higher labor costs. Their plan is to win on the basis of innovation and quality. Part of their strategy is to use consumer interfaces, move from CCD to CMOS sensors, add capabilities in software not hardware, and continue developing smaller camera footprints.

- Several of the larger camera vendors told me that over 60 percent of their business is non-industrial--that was surprising but shouldn’t have been. It’s been predicted for several years and now it’s true. Growth is very fast in transportation/traffic management, security, and point of sale/entertainment applications. Each sector (especially security) has its own barriers to entry, with large, established system vendors and low-cost competition from “legacy” CCTV cameras.

- According to system integrator Luster LightVision in Beijing, the Chinese machine vision market is roughly $76 million industrial and $50 million non-industrial, with transportation and logistics the fastest growing segments. 2010 will be the year that machine vision really takes off although it is hampered by the fact that the markets are so cost-sensitive, there is little interdisciplinary system design knowledge or machine vision expertise, and the industry organization is weak.

- GigE is seeing steady global growth, with the GigE Vision standard being used in some non-machine vision applications, including embedded military and medical applications.

- Tradeshows are inspiring because they give engineers a chance to get out of the office, lab, or factory and talk to suppliers, developers, or speakers at technical session. Google may be a great tool for search or for comparing components, but human interaction is a better source of innovation, or maybe for learning that someone else has already solved your problem. Engineering management should encourage their staff to get out, ask questions, and see what the world is doing.

VISION 2010 – Day One, VISION Award, market news

Stuttgart, November 9—The anticipation seems to have been rewarded for the now-official 323 exhibitors (a record number), as most exhibitors were delighted with the quantity and quality of leads. More coverage of the show is available at this link.



At a press conference the winner of the VISION Award was announced: SICK, for its ColorRanger E. Of the 23 entries, it was probably inevitable that some sort of 3-D product would win since 3-D is one of the fastest growing technology segments in machine vision.

The ColorRanger E combines high-speed 3-D and color linescan capabilities at more than 11 kHz. Applications include wood inspection, quality control in baking or food processing, and solar wafer shape and color quality assurance.

The list of contestants contains many other innovative products—you will find the list at the end of this blog.

During a press conference, Dr. Olaf Munkelt, chairman of the VDMA Machine Vision Group, talked about the unprecedented collapse of the global market and its impact on machine vision sales—“basic trust is still lacking”, he said. Nonetheless the industry has come bounding back, with German sales expected to rise 18% in 2010 over 2009, giving the German industry a value of 1.1 billion euros. Inspection, Munkelt said, remains the most important driver of sales, especially in the automotive market, and 3-D metrology is rapidly increasing.

In a video interview with me that we’ll post soon, Munkelt said that the global sales of machine vision break out roughly into one third each for Europe, Asia, and North America. He noted that the US share is dropping in relative terms and that part of the reason for this may be that investment in R&D is declining. This observation is not new and it’s one that concerns many of us in the US.

Basler also held a press conference in which its leaders, Dietmar Ley and Arndt Bake, described the company as moving to be a “pure play” camera company, leaving its systems business side. Bake said that Basler sees significant new growth opportunities in traffic (eg, tolls, parking, law enforcement), surveillance, and point-of-sale applications (eg, recycling, wheel alignment).

Finally, for a taste of the innovative technologies on display at the show, here’s the list of the 22 entries that did not win the VISION Award. We’ll be covering some of these products online and in future issues of the magazine:

• ABAQuS, Using the M200CT to check the quality of barcodes and 2-D codes as a prerequisite to automated data input with barcode scanners
• Allied Vision Technologies, Redefining the limits of GigE Vision bandwidth using Link Aggregation
• Aqsense, Global dimensional inspection and geometric features measurement
• BAP Image Systems, High-speed scanning basing on CIS-sensors
• Basler Vision Technologies, New CMOS camera generation
• Chronos Vision, High speed, real-time video eye tracking
• Dalsa, BOA smart camera
• Effilux, LED lighting for 3-D profilometry
• FLIR Commercial Systems, New FLIR A615
• Frankfurt Laser Company, HEML high-power temperature stabilised laser diode module
• Fraunhofer IDMT, Fraunhofer eye tracker–a calibration free solution with scalable and configurable Hough IP Core
• Imaging Diagnostics, Auto-focus camera using standard DSLR lenses
• Inviso, Brain-inspired machine vision
• Keyetech, Keyetech texture-based recogniser
• New Imaging Technologies, Native WDR: a radical, innovative breakthrough in CMOS sensors based on the Magic technology
• OPT Machine Vision Tech, Introduction of AOI light application in machine vision
• Photometrics, EMCCD camera – automatic, real-time imaging data standardization
• PMD Technologies, First robust and feasible gesture control using time-of-flight technology
• Raytrix, Single lens 3-D-camera with extended depth of field for industrial inspection
• Schott Lighting and Imaging, Telecentric zoom lens ML-Z07545HR
• Smartvision, BlobMax, A new method for a safe inspection of planar and curved surfaces with diffuse or specular reflection
• Softhard Technology, Currera-R atom based industrial smart camera
• Sony Image Sensing Solutions Europe, The smallest C-mount digital camera
• Spotrack, Method for the positioning of a multiple pan/tilt devices in single object tracking applications (multiple camera tracking)
• Technos Japan, The first visual inspection system that does not miss defects
• Vision for Vision, Interactive workshop for fast prototyping
• Xenics, The Lynx: a novel high-performance line scan camera system

VISION 2010 - As the show begins

November 8, Stuttgart--Preparations are hectically concluding for tomorrow's start of the 23rd annual VISION show. This is the third year that the show is held in the Neue Messe Stuttgart--the new, very large and sprawling complex next to the airport. The old Killesberg location was cozier for sure, but could never have accommodated the 306 exhibitors or 6000+ attendees expected for this show.

Based on the enthusiasm and energy of people I've spoken to so far, the show should be better than ever. The recovery of the industry is evident, with many companies reporting banner quarters or years. One of the biggest complaints is the shortage of components such as sensors, so vendors are struggling to build cameras fast enough to meet demand. Not such a bad problem after a very difficult recession.



We will be covering the show in several ways. We'll be posting videos about the show, the markets, and multiple technical sessions on topics such as GigE Vision, megapixel lenses, CMOS sensors, data transmission standards, and CoaXPress. We'll also be recording videos from the Global Vision Standards demonstration booth, including demonstrations of Camera Link HS and GigE Vision. GigE Vision will be especially interesting to follow because it is beginning to be used outside of the machine vision world, including in embedded military and medical applications.

Also, we will be posting a series of sponsored videos from machine vision vendors who describe their products and applications in some depth.

And of course, in the coming issues of Vision Systems Design magazine and online we'll be publishing in-depth technical articles by editor Andy Wilson about the most interesting technical developments at the show, including the winner of the VISION award.