Camera maker Point Grey Research (Richmond, BC, Canada) will be hosting the AIA Winter 2012 Vision Standards Meeting in Vancouver, Canada from February 13-17.

This is the first meeting of its kind where leading industry players meet to progress technical milestones on vision interface standards. One of the key items on the agenda is the continued effort to form the USB3 Vision standard for a November 2012 release.

USB 2.0 products were added to Point Grey's portfolio in 2005 and Point Grey demonstrated the world's first USB 3.0 camera in 2009.

Since launching the Flea3 USB 3.0 camera, Point Grey has built a number of USB 3.0 components, including host controller cards, cables and software. The company launched a $79 PCI Express Gen 2.0 host adapter card for the USB 3.0 standard -- the U3-PCIE2-2P01 -- in December last year.

"When compared to the existing lineup of digital interfaces, USB 3.0 offers a 400 Mbyte/s throughput and, like FireWire, provides power and data over a single cable," says Mike Gibbons, Point Grey product marketing manager.

While USB 3.0 is almost 10 times as fast as GigE, Gibbons acknowledged that GigE's maximum cable length was superior and that both USB 3.0 and GigE would likely coexist for industrial, scientific, and traffic applications.

For those interested in the progress of USB3 Vision, a white paper can be found at www.visiononline.org.

-- By Dave Wilson, Senior Editor, Vision Systems Design