Intevac Photonics, a subsidiary of Intevac (Santa Clara, CA, USA), has received a $10m contract to develop a camera for the US Army’s Apache Helicopter.

Researchers led by Dr. John Zhang from the University of Texas at Austin (Austin, TX, USA) have created a portable, miniature microscope that may help reduce the time taken to diagnose oral cancer.

Intelligent Fingerprinting (Norwich, UK) has signed a deal with Smart Start (Irving, Texas, USA) granting it exclusive North American marketing and distribution rights for its fingerprint drug-testing device.

Smart camera vendors are developing products for niche applications using novel optics, filters, and sensors.

AV&R Vision & Robotics has developed a system that combines visual inspection, robotics, and 3-D profiling techniques to inspect critical components such as those used in the aerospace and medical manufacturing industries.

Coleman Technologies Inc. (CTI; Newtown Square, PA, USA) has developed a linescan-based imaging system that counts a variety of seeds at rates of up to 1000 seeds/sec with a counting accuracy greater than 99%.

Using an automated optical inspection (AOI) tool based on a contact image sensor system from Tichawa Vision, Ersa's Versaprint solder-paste printer provides a 100% in-line inspection at a speed of 9.1 m/sec.

Graduate student Steven Arroyo of Rice University (Houston, TX, USA) has built a 3-D imaging system using structured light and has detailed the design on The Hackengineer web site.

Any nostalgic feelings for the past may be better put aside with the understanding that the future will only bring with it more exciting technologies, products, and applications.

The European Machine Vision Association (EMVA) is to break away from the German Verband Deutscher Maschinen- und Anlagenbau (VDMA) to become an independent non-for-profit association.

University of New South Wales (UNSW; Sydney, Australia) researchers have unveiled the first microchip which is expected to power Australia's first bionic eye.

An image sensor from OmniVision Technologies (Santa Clara, CA, USA) has been designed into Ambu's (Glen Burnie, MD, USA) aScope 2, a single-use intubation videoscope intended for medical procedures such as percutaneous dilational tracheostomy (PDT).

Navy unmanned aircraft will be able to distinguish small pirate boats from other vessels when an Office of Naval Research (ONR; Arlington, VA, USA)-funded sensor starts airborne tests this summer.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has awarded On Semiconductor (Phoenix, AZ, USA) a joint development contract for the next generation star tracker CMOS Image Sensor (CIS), known as the High Accuracy Star Tracker 3 (HAS3).