VDMA Machine Vision:
Slow return to growth
Stuttgart, 3 November 2009: "Machine vision was unable to avoid the effects of the financial and economic crisis in 2009 and was forced to deal with a severe drop in turnover", explained Dr. Olaf Munkelt, Chairman of the Board of VDMA Machine Vision, at the press conference for the opening of VISION 2009 on Tuesday in Stuttgart. After steady growth in the German machine vision industry for two decades and a historic record of EUR1.2 billion in turnover in 2008, the flow of incoming orders has found itself in free fall since the fourth quarter of the past year. According to VDMA analyses, the German machine vision industry was faced with an approximately 30 percent reduction of turnover in 2009 to reach just under EUR850 million, a level similar to that of 2003. Other areas in the capital goods industry were hit even harder by the financial and economic crisis, with machine vision less severely affected in comparison. The wide and diverse spectrum of machine vision customer industries and application proved to be of benefit here. In particular, the dependence on the automotive industry has taken a noticeable step back in recent years and now lies at below 25 percent for the German machine vision industry (22 percent for the European machine vision industry respectively). In contrast are the new, non-industrial applications, for example, in security, agriculture, intelligent traffic systems or the medical device industry, which together contribute significantly towards the business of machine vision and boast a more solid economic situation.
Machine vision affected worldwide
"The downturn for machine vision in 2009 which resulted from the financial and economic crisis is a global trend", explained Munkelt. In April, the European Machine Vision Association (EMVA) estimated the drop in turnover to be at 22 percent for all of Europe. In North America, the Automated Imaging Association (AIA) is assuming a reduction of the business volume by 35 percent based on data from the first half-year. The Japanese Machine Vision Association (JIIA) calculates a 35 percent drop in turnover in 2009.
Crisis management strategies
With regard to this development, VDMA Machine Vision asked its members in October 2009 for their strategies for surviving the crisis. According to the results, almost three quarters of those companies asked implemented a cost reduction programme in 2009. Almost 60 percent of machine vision companies introduced reduced working hours. "This shows how serious the current crisis is and what efforts are being undertaken by the industry in order to hold on to their most important resource - qualified employees", remarked Munkelt. A good fifty percent of those companies asked did not observe any remarkable decrease in their employee numbers, while 36 percent of companies have fewer employees in 2009 compared to the previous year. For 30 percent of those asked, compulsory redundancies could not be avoided.
Return to growth
According to predictions from the International Monetary Fund, the global economy is set for significant growth again in 2010. Those estimated developments for gross domestic products in the most important industry nations, with the exception of China and India, which are still experiencing negative results in 2009 are expected to show positive results once again in 2010. This will also drive growth for the machine vision industry worldwide. According to current data from the Ifo Institute, the global economic climate is now clearly increasing, indicating an impending recovery of the incoming orders in the capital goods industry. Munkelt: "This positive outlook is also confirmed by the current VDMA survey: more than 70 percent of those machine vision companies asked expect turnover to increase again in 2010; 20 percent even anticipate an increase of more than ten percent. The employee numbers are also likely to increase slightly." In view of this, VDMA Machine Vision is predicting a five percent increase in turnover in 2010 to reach approx. EUR890 million. However, the positive outlook should not disguise the fact that it may take years until the record level of 2008 is achieved again. The machine vision industry used the 2009 crisis year to intensify its innovative activity. The increase in standardisation, which is promoted worldwide by the machine vision industry, simplifies the use of technology. New application fields are opening up further market potential. What remains are the demands of industrial mass production for cost reduction, quality control, increase in productivity and safety across all industries: machine vision is providing the solutions. Machine vision systems are also contributing considerably to resource conservation, for example by avoiding waste or creating new approaches in recycling and the return of refundable bottles. Environmentally friendly products, such as solar cells, can be economically manufactured primarily through the use of machine vision and robotics. The "Green Automation" campaign, initiated among others by VDMA Robotics+Automation, will be presenting such examples more and more in the future.
Innovation offensive with GigE cameras
Highlights at VISION 2009: GigE camera with double the bandwidth ? More light-sensitive sensors ? World?s smallest TOF camera
VISION 2009, the world's leading trade fair for machine vision and identification technologies, will again feature some great surprises this year when it opens its doors at the highly modern Stuttgart Trade Fair Centre from 3 to 5 November 2009. The trade fair will focus, in particular, on digital cameras. As predicted by many experts, Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) cameras are gaining wider acceptance on the market and are making a big impression through clever innovations. For example, engineers at Allied Vision Technologies have come up with something special: With a record speed of up to 240 MB per second for the new Prosilica GX camera series, we have managed to make a technological breakthrough in GigE , said Ingo Lewerendt, Director Product Management at Allied Technologies. The camera is equipped with two GigE ports which are configured as a so-called link aggregation group (LAG). This means that the two ports merge into one port with double the bandwidth and the PC recognises the camera as a single device. The camera is predestined for machine vision applications in which high frame rates are required, for example in high-resolution quality inspections of electronic components or in intelligent traffic systems (IST). Prosilica GX will make its debut at VISION 2009.
MaxxVision GmbH will present the first GigE vision camera series from Sony at VI-SION 2009. The four models are based on the GenICam Standard which simplifies the configuration complexity when connecting the camera, said Sayed Soliman, Managing Director of MaxxVision GmbH. The scope of supply includes resolutions up to 5 megapixels and refresh rates of up to 90 frames per second (fps). One of the models can also be used in the near infrared spectrum. The cameras also ensure safe, loss-free data transmission thanks to a so-called packet resend mechanism which prevents the loss of image data during data transmission, added Soliman.
Baumer GmbH has also been very inventive, and will present GigE cameras at VI-SION 2009. These cameras can be used to directly control customer-specific LED illumination systems from the camera. In addition to a trigger port and a flash port, the cameras have been equipped with four additional outputs. All these outputs sup-ply a user-defined, pulse-width modulated signal which can be adapted exactly to the particular lighting module. This increases the flexibility of the machine vision systems and makes additional lighting controllers superfluous, emphasised Jens Klat-tenhoff, Market and Product Manager for Digital Imaging at Baumer GmbH.
The MotionBLITZ EoSens mini, a high-speed storage camera from Mikrotron GmbH, comes up trumps when there is a need to save space and reduce lighting components and cost. Thanks to its extremely high light sensitivity of 2500 ASA monochrome and 2000 ASA colour RGB, it minimises the otherwise normal lighting components and cost, and is also extremely compact. According to the manufacturer, built-in fixed pattern noise (FPN) correction on a pixel-by-pixel basis corrects black level and dynamic deviation with the help of an internally stored reference image and produces exceedingly sharp and low-noise images. The selectable, non-linear dynamic transfer function delivers sharp image details even with extreme brightness and darkness differences. The camera therefore has an internal dynamic range of up to 90 dB. With a full image resolution of 1280 x 1024 pixels, the frame rate is 506 fps. Gigabit Ethernet is integrated as an interface.
JAI will present a highlight at VISION 2009, i.e. the newly developed high dynamic range (HDR) camera AD-081CL. This camera is regarded as unique because it incor-porates two progressive scan CCD image sensors mounted on a custom-designed optical prism. The prism-based design enables the camera to simultaneously capture two channels of 30 fps video, with each channel having a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels, and precise alignment to the same optical axis. Provision is made for two con-figurable CameraLink outputs as an interface, but the camera is also available with a GigE Vision interface. According to the manufacturer, this camera is especially suit-able for inspection tasks where incident light or bright reflections are present, for example LED inspections or glass inspections. However, this camera also contains many other advantages which experts will be pleased to explain on the stand of JAI during VISION 2009.
Visitors to VISION 2009 will be able to see immense advances both in two-dimensional cameras and line cameras. The latter cameras are becoming increasingly more light-sensitive and faster. STEMMER IMAGING will, for example, present the new compact and fully independent In-Sight 5604 vision system from Cognex at VISION 2009. This system extends the product family in the 5000 Series. The line scan machine vision system combines industrially rugged In-Sight hardware and best-in-class vision tools with a 1024 pixel high-speed line scan imager. This eliminates the need for PC-based vision systems and separate line scan camera heads. The line scan sensor used for this vision system is much more light-sensitive than the imagers utilised in most cameras. With support for hardware and software encoders, the line camera system has the flexibility needed to solve the image acquisition challenges across a wide range of ap-plications, for example fast moving discrete parts on a conveyor, cylindrical parts, large parts and continuous products such as tapes and plastic sheets.
The machine vision specialist in-situ develops innovative application solutions in optical 3-D surface inspection. The company will present a new product called In-SpectPro 3D at VISION 2009. This inspection system now also includes the third dimension during surface inspections. With the aid of the shape from shading technique perfected by in-situ, three-dimensional features such as embossings, folds and varnished surfaces can be inspected. According to Rainer Obergrussberger, Man-aging Director of in-situ GmbH, the advantage of the InSpectPro 3D system is that it is now also possible to detect defects and deviations which are normally not discerni-ble in a two-dimensional image. Examples here include defects such as bubbles, occlusions, craters, paint runs, orange peel, pores, cracks and scratches.
The Institute for Neuro and Bioinformatics will exhibit a future-oriented product during VISION 2009. As part of the EU-funded ARTTS Project, the researchers will present the latest generation of time-of-flight (TOF) cameras: they include the world's smallest TOF camera because it only measures 4x4x4 centimetres and no longer requires a separate power supply. This task is performed by the USB connector. TOF cameras not only supply information on both the appearance and three-dimensional shape of objects. They transmit infrared light and measure how long the light reflected by the object takes to return to the camera. A combination with a high-resolution HDTV colour sensor will also be presented at VISION this year. TOP cameras are used in the safety shut-off of industrial robots, but also to detect objects and people.
The 22nd International Trade Fair for Machine Vision and Identification Technologies from 3 to 5 November 2009 will not only feature cameras, but also sensors, frame grabbers, LEDs and complete systems geared towards user-oriented problem solutions. These exhibits will include 3-D machine vision systems for the main group of customers, i.e. the mechanical engineering, car and electrical/electronic industries, as well as applications from the large number of non-industrial sectors. The trade fair managers are more than satisfied with the number of registrations received to date: Around 250 exhibitors have already registered for VISION 2009, which is due to start in eleven weeks time. A large number of prospective exhibitors are keeping their options open. We therefore have high hopes that the previous years figure of 290 exhibitors will again be equalled, said Florian Niethammer, VISION Project Manager.
