Starting this month, the Vision Insider blog will offer you the reader an opinionated twice a week update about industry trends, market reports, new products and technologies. While many of these will be staff-written, we will be using this forum to allow you our readers to opine on subjects such as machine vision and image processing standards, software, hardware, and tradeshows you find useful.
If you have any strong opinions that you feel we could publish (without of course being taken to court), I would be only too pleased to hear from you. And, of course, if you disagree with what I have said, you are only too free to leave a comment using our easy to use feedback form.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Friday, August 19, 2011
A new journey
Conard Holton has accepted a new position as Associate Publisher and Editor in Chief of a sister publication, Laser Focus World. Andy Wilson, founding editor of Vision Systems Design, will be taking over the role of editor in chief. Andy has been the technical mainstay of Vision Systems Design since its beginning fifteen years ago, writing many of the articles that have established it as the premier resource for machine vision and image processing.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Lightfield camera headed for the consumer market
A recent article in the New York Times reveals that Lytro, a Mountain View, CA startup, plans to release a lightfield camera into the point-and-shoot consumer market later this year, allowing professional and amateur photographers to "take shots first and focus later."
With $50 million in venture funding, the company is led by Ren Ng, a Stanford University Ph.D. who wrote his thesis on the subject of lightfield cameras. His work and that of others are described in the March 2008 Vision Systems Design article Sharply Focused.
Several research organizations and machine vision camera manufacturers have developed lightfield cameras, including Stanford, MIT, Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs, Raytrix, and Point Grey Research. Like traditional cameras, lightfield cameras gather light using a single lens. However, by placing an array of lens elements at the image plane, the structure of light impinging on different sub-regions of the lens aperture can be captured.
By capturing data from these multiple sub-regions, software-based image-processing techniques can be used to select image data from any sub-region within the aperture. In this way, images can be recreated that represent views of the object from different positions, recreating a stereo effect. Better still, if the scene depth is calculated from the raw image, each pixel can be refocused individually to give an image that is in focus everywhere.
An interactive photo from the Lytro website gives an idea of the potenial uses of lightfield cameras (hint: click on an area of the image to focus). And there will be a Facebook app.
With $50 million in venture funding, the company is led by Ren Ng, a Stanford University Ph.D. who wrote his thesis on the subject of lightfield cameras. His work and that of others are described in the March 2008 Vision Systems Design article Sharply Focused.
Several research organizations and machine vision camera manufacturers have developed lightfield cameras, including Stanford, MIT, Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs, Raytrix, and Point Grey Research. Like traditional cameras, lightfield cameras gather light using a single lens. However, by placing an array of lens elements at the image plane, the structure of light impinging on different sub-regions of the lens aperture can be captured.
By capturing data from these multiple sub-regions, software-based image-processing techniques can be used to select image data from any sub-region within the aperture. In this way, images can be recreated that represent views of the object from different positions, recreating a stereo effect. Better still, if the scene depth is calculated from the raw image, each pixel can be refocused individually to give an image that is in focus everywhere.
An interactive photo from the Lytro website gives an idea of the potenial uses of lightfield cameras (hint: click on an area of the image to focus). And there will be a Facebook app.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Don Braggins remembered
Don Braggins, a long-standing and highly respected figure in the machine vision industry, has passed away at age 70. Founder of Machine Vision Systems Consultancy in Royston, England, in 1983, Don specialized in image processing and analysis and was a frequent contributor to and participant in organizations such as the European Machine Vision Association and the UK Industrial Vision Association (UKIVA). First as a founding member of the UKIVA in 1992, he became its director in 1995, and helped guide its development for many years. He remained a consultant to the association until diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor in 2010.
Traveling frequently with his wife Anne, Don was welcomed by companies, universities, and trade organizations around the world for his experience, insights, and good humor. Before establishing his own company, he was product marketing manager for image analysis products at Cambridge Instruments. A graduate of Clare College, Cambridge University, he was a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of SPIE.
Machine Vision Systems Consultancy was known for its independence as a source of information about machine vision products and services. Clients varied from multi-nationals, to startup companies, venture capitalists, and OEMs.
As editor of technical journals and frequent contributor to trade press magazines, Don regularly researched the European market for industrial vision systems for individual clients and associations. Between 2000 and 2002 he served as a non-executive board member of Fastcom Technology, a Swiss spinout from EPFL Lausanne. He was also a board member of Falcon Vision in Hungary, providing international marketing advice and technology sourcing, and introduced Falcon to the French company Edixia, which subsequently bought a controlling stake.
“Don knew the machine vision industry like the back of his hand,” remembers Andy Wilson, Editor of Vision Systems Design. “You could always rely on him to direct you towards the latest developments and innovations shown at a trade show. He was not only knowledgeable but would freely share his valuable opinions and thoughts with anyone who cared to ask. I will miss him.”
In addition to his wife Anne, Don is survived by two children and five grandchildren.
The staff of Vision Systems Design extend our sincerest condolences to the Braggins family.
--Conard Holton, Vision Systems Design
Traveling frequently with his wife Anne, Don was welcomed by companies, universities, and trade organizations around the world for his experience, insights, and good humor. Before establishing his own company, he was product marketing manager for image analysis products at Cambridge Instruments. A graduate of Clare College, Cambridge University, he was a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of SPIE.Machine Vision Systems Consultancy was known for its independence as a source of information about machine vision products and services. Clients varied from multi-nationals, to startup companies, venture capitalists, and OEMs.
As editor of technical journals and frequent contributor to trade press magazines, Don regularly researched the European market for industrial vision systems for individual clients and associations. Between 2000 and 2002 he served as a non-executive board member of Fastcom Technology, a Swiss spinout from EPFL Lausanne. He was also a board member of Falcon Vision in Hungary, providing international marketing advice and technology sourcing, and introduced Falcon to the French company Edixia, which subsequently bought a controlling stake.
“Don knew the machine vision industry like the back of his hand,” remembers Andy Wilson, Editor of Vision Systems Design. “You could always rely on him to direct you towards the latest developments and innovations shown at a trade show. He was not only knowledgeable but would freely share his valuable opinions and thoughts with anyone who cared to ask. I will miss him.”
In addition to his wife Anne, Don is survived by two children and five grandchildren.
The staff of Vision Systems Design extend our sincerest condolences to the Braggins family.
--Conard Holton, Vision Systems Design
Friday, May 27, 2011
EMVA meeting--machine vision business good, missed the volcano
From May 12-14, more than 140 attendees at the 2011 EMVA business conference in Amsterdam celebrated the soaring market for machine vision products and recounted tales of traveling home from the 2010 meeting in Istanbul through the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano "Cloud". They didn't realize they would just miss yet another cloud from an Icelandic volcano, Grímsvötn, which erupted just seven days after the conference ended and disrupted air travel across parts of northern Europe.
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.
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.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
New iPhone App for 3-D imaging
It's not exactly machine vision yet, but a researcher at Georgia Tech, Grant Schindler, has created what appears to be the first 3-D scanner app for an iPhone 4.
Using both the screen and the front-facing camera, the app--called Trimensional--detects patterns of light reflected off a face to build a true 3-D model.
Schindler says Trimensional can now share movies and animated GIFs of your 3-D scans and users can unlock the 3-D Model Export feature to create physical copies of any scanned object on a 3-D printer, or import textured 3-D scans into popular 3-D graphics software.
I wonder if and when such iPhone apps can be used in machine vision applications?
Using both the screen and the front-facing camera, the app--called Trimensional--detects patterns of light reflected off a face to build a true 3-D model.
Schindler says Trimensional can now share movies and animated GIFs of your 3-D scans and users can unlock the 3-D Model Export feature to create physical copies of any scanned object on a 3-D printer, or import textured 3-D scans into popular 3-D graphics software.
I wonder if and when such iPhone apps can be used in machine vision applications?
Monday, May 9, 2011
Machine vision vs Angry Birds
Readers of Vision Systems Design may know that OptoFidelity (Tampere, Finland) makes systems that test user experience with products such as PDAs and mobile phones. In fact, our October 2009 cover story featured one of the company’s automated test systems, the WatchDog, which performed just such a test using a JAI Camera Link camera and National Instruments frame grabber. The WatchDog system’s interface allows a user to correlate an exact measured response of both the refresh rate of the screen and any user interaction with the device.
Now, OptoFidelity has expanded its world and made a commercial-quality video called “Man vs Robot” about a vision-guided robotic system it has built that can beat humans playing Angry Birds — which, in the unlikely case you haven’t heard, is a computer game from Rovio Mobile (Espoo, Finland) being played by millions of people on various mobile displays.
Some of the fun, machine vision, and robot technology behind that video appears in this “Making of Man vs Robot” video, also from OptoFidelity.
Now, OptoFidelity has expanded its world and made a commercial-quality video called “Man vs Robot” about a vision-guided robotic system it has built that can beat humans playing Angry Birds — which, in the unlikely case you haven’t heard, is a computer game from Rovio Mobile (Espoo, Finland) being played by millions of people on various mobile displays.
Some of the fun, machine vision, and robot technology behind that video appears in this “Making of Man vs Robot” video, also from OptoFidelity.
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