Market health of European machine vision companies and companies doing business in Europe was reported to be excellent, with many focused on application areas that exhibit particular strength, especially automotive manufacturing, transportation imaging, and surveillance. From 2009 to 2010, overall growth by European companies was almost 35% (the drop from 2008 to 2009 had been -21% overall).
Germany expects to see overall growth of at least 11% in 2011, putting it back on a trend line consistent with pre-2009 sales, and about 20% growth was expected globally, according to the EMVA. Europe should see about 22% and the Americas about 19%. Asia, after a 62% year-over-year growth in 2010, should see a growth of 18% in 2011.
Describing the market trends, Gabriele Jansen, president of Jansen C.E.O. and Member of the EMVA Executive Board, attributed the strong rebound in machine vision sales to several factors:
- Increase in industrial production
- Broad-based improvement in sentiment among industry managers due to a significant increases in overall orders and in production trends
- Decline in the inventory of finished goods to historically low levels
- Remaining effects of stimulus programs for specific industries (eg, automotive)
- Strong increase in demand for machine vision in Asia
The conference mood was excited but a bit nervous, causing many to ask: How can this growth be sustained?
To inspire attendees to ponder answers to that question, the conference included several speakers who focused on the future, with talks about globalization and sustainablity, finding new markets using the Blue Ocean strategy, and how to think about and manage for the future.
Ramesh Rashkar, an MIT professor, described his lab's work in lightfield imaging and computional light transport, including recent work on a camera that can look around a corner. Speakers also address the rapid advances being made in service robots and machine vision for agriculture.
The networking, as always at EMVA events, was excellent. Talking with so many colleagues in the machine vision "industry" also reminded me that machine vision is not an industry per se. At its core, it is the integration of technologies and products that provide services or applications that benefit true industries such as automotive or consumer goods manufacturing, security, transportation, and agriculture.
Finally, a parting view of the Cloud that was missed: This Envisat image from ESA, acquired on 24 May 2011, shows a large cloud of ash northeast of Scotland that has been carried by winds from Iceland’s Grímsvötn volcano about 1000 km away. The Grímsvötn volcano, located in southeast Iceland about 200 km east of Reykjavik, began erupting on 21 May for the first time since 2004.
