CMOSIS was awarded the “German Innovation Award for Non-Clinical Intensive Care”. The prestigious award recognizes the significant progress in endoscope-based catheter technology for outpatient care achieved by the ultra-small NanEye CMOS camera developed at CMOSIS.
This year’s KAI award was presented to Stephan Voltz, CEO of CMOSIS GmbH, Nuremberg, by Dr Günter Schrot, Scientific Director of the KAI Congress (Kongress für ausserklinische Intensivpflege und Beatmung) in Berlin, Germany, on October 14, 2015, in Berlin.
With 64,386 visitors and 1,666 exhibitors SPS IPC Drives 2015 reaches new records. From 24 – 26 November also several EMVA members presented their latest innovations in products and services at the trade floor in Nuremberg, Germany.
“Machine Vision plays an important role in the automation world and as such continiously gains presence and visibility at the show – and this not restricted to the traditional vision suppliers. Having received a first positive feedback from EMVA members confirming the growing interest in machine vision obviously the real business results will be evaluated by the exhibitors in the coming weeks” said Thomas Lübkemeier, EMVA General Secretary.
Swiss company ViDi Systems is the winner of the second TÜV SÜD Innovation Award for Digitized Industries. The award was presented at the Smart Factory Innovation Forum, hosted by TÜV SÜD and munich network in Munich. The Innovation Award, which comes with EUR 6,000 in prize money, acknowledges companies that develop new, particularly promising solutions in the field of industry 4.0 which have proved fit for the market in at least one project.
Barcelona, 11 August, 2015. The European Machine Vision Association (EMVA) has published its 2015 Market Report “Machine Vision in Italy”. EMVA non-members can obtain the 39 paged pdf-report at a price of € 345,- plus VAT through info@emva.org.
The report for the first time maps the machine vision market in Italy. It covers the vision industry, their customers and the main applications as well as technical and commercial trends. In addition, the “eco system” for machine vision is described, including clusters, research centers and associations, trade shows and special magazines. This is being supplemented by market and growth drivers and an estimate of the market volume. In the general chapters readers find useful information about the Italian economy and how to invest in the country.
“Italy is a world leading machine building nation and has a healthy mix of small and medium size enterprises in its industry. The main portion of machine vision applications in Italy are realized in the industrial environment. This explains the large number of system providers and integrators in Italy”, says Andreas Breyer, EMVA’s Director of Market Research. “Also remarkable is the high number of academic institutes dedicated to machine vision disciplines. Altogether, we identified more than 200 players in the Italian machine vision market. Adding the relevant industry associations, all these players are listed by name and website in the report.”
Despite the still difficult national economic conditions, the machine vision industry in Italy expects 2015 to become a positive year after all. “During an EMVA-survey amongst Italian vision players none of the participants expected a decrease in turnover by the end of 2015. In fact, a quite robust increase in turnover of around 10 percent is anticipated, supported by the powerful exports of most customer industries”, adds Andreas Breyer.
With the current 2015 market report the EMVA continues the strategy to investigate all European markets through the eyes of the machine vision industry.
The EMVA Young Professional Award 2015 goes to Benjamin Busam, for his work on adaptable high-resolution real-time stereo tracking. Busam, who is 27 years old holds a Master degree in mathematics and is currently external PhD Student in informatics with focus on Computer Vision at the Chair for Computer Aided Medical Procedures of the Technical University of Munich, in cooperation with FRAMOS GmbH where he works as development engineer in the imaging systems department.
Picture source: EMVA
Real-time optical tracking system
State-of-the art solutions for position and orientation information in real-time for clinical interventions and diagnostic imaging techniques are bulky and rely on external tracking systems, hampered either by the limited accuracy of electromagnetic tracking or the requirement for a constant line of sight between the tracked devices and the external optical tracking systems respectively.
The awarded work presents an adaptable high-resolution tracking system based on stereo computer vision that can be used for real-time tracking applications which require high accuracy. Furthermore, the technological advantage lies in the ability to overcome current practical difficulties such as line of sight problems while opening the way for further developments of inside-out tracking solutions in the medical domain.
The Optical Tracking System facilitates high-precision, real-time pose estimation of tools and objects with a new concept in both hard- and software which robustly operates even in case of partial object occlusion.
By this, the system is not subject to medical applications only but also generally applicable for many industrial tasks involving highly accurate robot-guidance, tool-navigation and 3D measurements.
Young professional award part of EMVA Business Conference
The EMVA Young Professional Award is an annual award to honor the outstanding and innovative work of a student or a young professional in the field of machine vision or image processing. It is the goal of the European Machine Vision Association EMVA to further support innovation in the machine vision industry, to contribute to the important aspect of dedicated machine vision education and to provide a bridge between research and industry. With the annual Young Professional Award the EMVA intends to specifically encourage students to focus on challenges in the field of machine vision and to apply latest research results and findings in computer vision to the practical needs of the industry. The awardee was announced on June 13 during the 13th EMVA Business Conference in Athens/Greece, where he also had the opportunity to present his work as part of the regular conference program.
The 14th EMVA Business Conference will take place from 09.-11. June 2016 in Edinburgh/Scotland.
EMVA General Assembly in Athens elects extended Board
Jochem Herrmann, co-founder and Chief Scientist of the Dutch camera manufacturer Adimec is the new President of the European Machine Vision Association (EMVA). Herrmann has been EMVA Board member since 2013 and takes over the presidency from Toni Ventura-Traveset (Datapixel, Spain), who has been the dedicated leader of the association through a phase of transition. The Board and the General Manger thanked Toni Ventura for his successful work and continuous support of the EMVA since its founding in 2003. “The transition period now clearly lies behind us and for EMVA it is now time to expand our activities and further grow the association. I am looking forward to further develop EMVA together with my fellow Board members and the whole EMVA team”, said the newly elected president in his first statement.
Picture (from left to right): The new elected EMVA Board of Directors: Dr. Jean Caron, Dr. Kai-Udo Modrich, Gabriele Jansen, Jochem Herrmann, Michel Ollivier, Toni Ventura-Traveset. Not in the picture: Prof. Dr. Bernd Jähne. Picture surce: EMVA
Furthermore, the EMVA members elected an extended Board of Directors during the General Assembly on 11 June in Athens. New members of the Board are Dr. Kai-Udo Modrich, Managing Director of Carl Zeiss Automated Inspection, and Prof. Dr. Bernd Jähne, who heads the Heidelberg Collaboratory for Image Processing of Heidelberg University. The EMVA members also confirmed the previous Board members Gabriele Jansen (Vision Ventures, Germany), Michel Ollivier (Tiama, France), Toni Ventura-Traveset (Datapixel, Spain) and Dr. Jean Caron (Euresys, Belgium). Michel Ollivier is new EMVA Vice President, and Dr. Jean Caron takes over the position as treasurer. Dirk Käseberg (Mettler-Toledo Garvens, Germany) has resigned from the Board to concentrate on increased responsibilities in his company, but will continue to work closely with the EMVA Board in a less formal manner.
Barcelona, 08 June, 2015. Since November 2009, leading machine vision associations have been cooperating to promote vision standards globally. The China Machine Vision Union has now joined the group, becoming the fifth member. The other members are:
AIA-Advancing Vision + Imaging (AIA)
European Machine Vision Association (EMVA)
Japan Industrial Imaging Association (JIIA)
VDMA Machine Vision (VDMA MV)
Cooperation on vision standards is critical to the expanded use of vision and imaging technologies throughout industry. Standards cut down on development time, investment costs, and also accelerate time-to-market. Jochem Herrmann, EMVA board member comments: Cooperation on standards is very beneficial for all companies active in machine vision and for the industry as a whole. Im therefore very happy that CMVU has joined G3. Through the membership of CMVU, current G3 standards will be promoted more effectively in China, but also Chinese standardization initiatives will be open for the members of the other G3 associations.”
Jeff Burnstein, President of the AIA adds, Since the start of the G3 standardization initiative, the global vision associations have met on a regular basis, promoting enhanced communication and coordination on standards activities. With the CMVU joining the group, we have an even stronger foundation to keep standards development and promotion focused and effective.
Sachio Kiura, Chairman of JIIA, remarked JIIA would like to express our sincere welcome to the CMVU to the G3. We look forward to the CMVU working with the G3 as a major leader in the Asian market, to expand and promote machine vision standards.
“In the past few years China has been the most dynamic market for machine vision. Since 2008, exports from Germany have more than quadrupled. We welcome CMVU joining the international cooperation initiative on standardization and look forward to a fruitful cooperation,” says Klaus-Henning Noffz, member of the board of VDMA Machine Vision.
Pan Jin, President of the CMVU comments, It is our honor to become a member of the G3. Joining the cooperation agreement will create a bridge between China and other associations throughout the world. Also it will help us to enhance and extend the development of machine vision by unifying the vision standards. As one of the biggest potential markets, we are willing to contribute to this industry under this cooperation.
In addition to providing an open communication channel between the various vision associations, one additional significant accomplishment of the G3 has been the publication of the Global Machine Vision Interface Standards brochure. For the first time, vision users have a comprehensive reference which describes what digital interface hardware and software standards are and provides an unbiased comparison between the various standards. This brochure is available in various languages and formats from the member associations; an English version can be downloaded free of charge in the standards section of the EMVA websites.
13th EMVA Business Conference again with over one hundred participants
Barcelona, 05 June, 2015. Machine vision experts from close to 20 countries across the globe currently prepare for the European spring meeting of the machine vision community: Well over one hundred participants have registered to-date for the 13th EMVA Business Conference 2015, which takes place 11 – 13 June in the Greek capital Athens.
Keynote Speaker on the first conference day will be the British publicist Liam Halligan with a speech about „Russian Impact on Europe’s Economy“. In the technical session Dr. Kai-Udo Modrich from Carl Zeiss Automated Inspection will share is view on „The merge of metrology and vision“, and Dr. Pieter Jonker from Delft University will talk about “Machine Vision for Service Robots and Surveillance”. The panel discussion on the role of CCD technology in future machine vision applications – moderated by Gunnar Mey from Landesmesse Stuttgart – will join image sensor experts on stage.
On the second conference day, the new EMVA country report 2015 with a special focus on the machine vision market in Italy will be introduced, and later on this years’ winner of the EMVA Young Professional Award will be awarded and given the opportunity to present his work. The conference closes with a keynote speech by Christer Holloman, CEO and Co-founder at Divido, UK, titled “Using Technology to Sell”.
Shortly prior to the official start of the EMVA Business Conference, EMVA members meet in Athens for their 2015 General Assembly. One important item on the agenda there is the regularly scheduled election of the EMVA Board of Directors.
The complete conference program 2015 as well as access to one of the last conference passes can be found on www.emva.org.
With the new 3.0 release the GenICam standard hosted by the European Machine Vision Association (EMVA) receives a multiplicity of new functions. One special feature therein is the standardized connection of 3D cameras. For this, 3D camera manufacturers and software developers commonly developed a uniformly accepted standard which not only 3D experts offers a much easier integration but also enables so far unexperienced users an easy access into 3D machine vision.
3D-cameras have become very popular in machine vision. The market has expanded in the last years; a multitude of 3D cameras is now available from different vendors. Technically, the most popular 3D camera technologies are the Sheet of Light technology and Structured Light method. However, also cameras based on Time of Flight and Stereo Vision technologies are offered. Still, most integrators tend to rely on standard 2D cameras at the moment due the lack of compatibility between machine vision software and 3D cameras.
The different 3D technologies also bring different implementations of the various camera manufacturers. In many cases the camera maker requires a special driver or proprietary programming interface (API) to operate the respective camera. This problem has been addressed and solved for 2D cameras already years ago through the introduction of the commonly used GenICam standard. The standard made a significant contribution to the success of machine vision and now takes this success to the next level through the integration of 3D cameras.
In the GenICam 3.0 release for the first time the access to 3D cameras is standardized. By this, communication and image acquisition between the application (software) and the camera takes place on a uniformed basis and enables a controlled exchange which applies across various camera manufacturers and interfaces (GigE Vision, USB3 Vision, CoaXPress, CameraLink HS). Furthermore, also proprietary transport layers can make use of the new standardized GenICam 3D interface.
“Since practically all software solutions support the standard, GenICam compliant cameras are being recognized and put into operation automatically by the software”, says Stephan Kieneke, 3D Product Manager at Automation Technology and member of the GenICam standard committee. “This facilitates the handling in particular for users with little experience in 3D imaging since they can access the 3D camera in a familiar working environment.”
During the VISION 2014 in Stuttgart a demo was presented at the International Machine Vision Standards booth organized by the EMVA, which showed the interaction between the 3D camera and vision software using a preview of the new GenICam 3.0.
It showed that for instance integrators will be able in the near future to extract 3D point clouds out of the cameras and process them directly in their software without circumstantial data conversion.
“This will make it possible to perform the transformation of 2D pixels to 3D world coordinates either within the camera or have it calculated by the software according to the given standardized transformation parameters”, explains Christoph Zierl, Technical Director at MVTec Software GmbH and Vice-Chair of the GenICam standard committee. “Until now, this process was only possible through a proprietary manufacturer setting which complicated usability and interchangeability for the customer.” A problem which has been solved with the introduction of GenICam 3.0, since no matter which technology hides behind a 3D camera, the user always receives a standardized data format.
The expansion of GenICam for 3D cameras now bears the chance that the dissemination of 3D applications increases considerably and establishes as future oriented solution in many industries. Machine vision user from other industries now have an ease access to 3D image processing which sets the scene for a much broader usage of this technology in the coming years.
London was uncommonly chilly this April, as delegates to the Spring 2015 International Vision Standards meeting will testify. But inside the conference rooms at the St. Giles Hotel in London, the temperature was somewhat warmer, as engineers from around the world hotly debated what enhancements should be added to the current standard software and hardware interfaces used in the vision systems industry.
Aside from tackling the standards issues, the forum also provided the opportunity for engineers from camera, frame grabber and software companies to obtain independent confirmation that their products were interoperable in what has now become known as the twice yearly “PlugFest”.
During the weeklong event — which was hosted by Active Silicon and sponsored by Novus Light Technologies Today and the European Machine Vision Association (EMVA) — the chairs of the major industrial vision standards took part in an exclusive forum in which they set out their roadmaps for the future.
Many people who use the vision technologies discussed during the week long meetings — and at the forum — cannot realize the amount of time and effort that the engineers from many of the industry’s leading companies put into defining these standards, as they set aside their competitive instincts to ensure the future compatibility of next-generation vision systems.
On this occasion, the delegates were rewarded for their labor by being treated to a five-star dinner organized by the hosts Active Silicon and sponsor Novus Light Technologies Today at the illustrious Royal Institution in London, the home to the Faraday museum. It was a chance for many to reflect upon the achievements that had been made by scientists over a hundred years ago that built the foundations of the technology upon which we stand today.
Backwards and Forwards
Looking back at developments in the vision industry over the years, Active Silicon’s Chris Beynon acknowledged the role that software now plays when defining the functionality of all vision systems’ interfaces.
While mature standards like Camera Link predominantly only defined the functions of a vision system interface in hardware, since the advent of the GenICam software standard, the functionality of all the contemporary vision systems interfaces are now guided by enhancements to that software specification which the underlying interface standards then support.
Clearly, by enabling any potential modifications to the GenICam specifications to be reviewed by engineers at meetings such as the International Vision Standards meetings, the future interoperability of all the vision systems interfaces discussed at the forum, will — hopefully — be guaranteed.
Present during the meeting were Chris Beynon from Active Silicon (representing CoaXPress), Eric Carey from Teledyne Dalsa (representing GigE Vision), Reynold Dodson from BitFlow (representing Camera Link), Mike Miethig from Teledyne Dalsa (representing Camera Link HS), Eric Gross from National Instruments (representing USB3 Vision) and Friedrich Dierks from Basler (representing GenICam).
CoaXPress Enhancements
At the forum itself, Active Silicon’s Chief Technical Officer Chris Beynon kicked off the session to describe the current state of play with CoaXPress, an asymmetric high speed serial communication standard over coaxial cable that his company developed with Adimec and EqcoLogic.
Version 1.0 of CoaXPress has been available for several years, and most of the systems that are currently deployed in the industry conform to it. Various minor improvements were added to Version 1.1, which was released 18 months ago……
GenICam 3.0 for standardized 3D cameras
