Standardization is the key to the success of machine vision technology. Machine vision standards are commonly developed in the standard working groups and here by dedicated individuals. The EMVA interview series ‘Faces of Machine Vision Standards‘ introduces engineers having joined a standard working group and talk about their motivation to contribute and which experience they take out for their daily work.
EMVA recently spoke with GenICam working group member Silvan Murer, Embedded Systems Architect at Heliotis AG:
Why do you participate in the GenICam WG?
Beginning with the development of our new camera platform for 3D measurement systems in year 2017, I was responsible for its software interface.
During this time, I got to know GenICam. Cameras with the standardized interface (GenICam) are usable out of the box in many common machine visions applications. Thanks to standardization, no additional device-specific information, like API documentation, is required and our customers can use our cameras directly in their usual environment. This reduces their development cost and our support efforts at the same time.
Motivated by these facts, I delved into the topic and started to implement our new camera interface based on GenICam. At the beginning of our membership, we used the existing standard. While working with it, we noticed that a few tweaks would improve the definition. So, I got more actively involved in the standardization.
Which GenICam parts do you intend to shape with your input?
In the GenICam WG, each member can work on the topics they are most experienced with and where their contribution benefits the company they work for. In my case, it’s basically the transport layer interface and the cameras configuration interface.
As we develop 3D cameras, our participation in the standardization for submission of 3D information is relevant.
How does your company benefit from your WG participation?
We took a huge benefit from the WG back during the development of our new camera interface. The discussions within the WG clearly improved our interface quality. That’s still true today, as we benefit from the plug fests to test our camera with different software vendors. Furthermore, the interaction with the software vendor’s engineers helps improving the interoperability between our 3D camera and various machine vision software.
As I said, we thus benefit from fewer support requests and our customers enjoy a quick and high-quality integration of our camera. This means they can focus on their core machine vision developments after a very short time.
What was your biggest light bulb moment in the GenICam collaboration?
For me it’s crazy that so many different cultures and companies around the world can work together on the standardization. Regardless of whether you are a competitor or a business partner, everyone works together. No matter how big the company is, every opinion is valued equally.
This also creates friendship and I’m looking forward to seeing my colleagues at the next IVSM.
