Spansion, a flash memory designer and manufacturer, commissioned Graftek to develop a machine-vision system that automatically detects residual metal film on patterned, metalized semiconductor wafer surfaces.

In work funded by the USDA Specialty Crop Research Initiative, engineers from the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a computer vision-based system that can accurately estimate the yields from orchards of apple trees.

Coupling the latest technological advances in robotics with audio, visual, and tactile feedback systems and software is paving the way for the next generation of mobile robots.

When NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover Curiosity landed on Mars in August, four cameras developed by Malin Space Science Systems were ready to capture high-definition color images of its surface.

It's always great to get away for a week in summer and spend thousands of dollars on a holiday. Personally, I like to accomplish this in remote destinations far from people encumbered with iPhones, computer tablets, and PCs.

To optically inspect the surface structures of superconducting accelerator cavities, engineers at Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY; Hamburg, Germany) have developed a fully automated robot.

In an effort to differentiate its products from those of its competition, engineers at SVS-Vistek (Seefeld, Germany) have developed a prototype version of an industrial camera that incorporates a standardized Micro Four Thirds lens mount.

Researchers at the Department of Chemical Engineering at Cambridge University (Cambridge, UK) led by Dr. J Axel Zeitler have been awarded a grant of over £240,000 to develop a terahertz sensor that can be used to measure the quality of paint coatings on automobiles.

After touching down onto Mars on Sunday, a camera aboard NASA's one-ton rover Curiosity has returned the first image of the Martian surface.

Researchers at the Ishikawa Oku Laboratory at Tokyo University (Tokyo, Japan) have developed a vision-based robot that can beat a human opponent at the game of rock-paper-scissors 100 per cent of the time.

According to a recent report by IMS Research (Wellingborough, UK) the world market for machine vision was worth nearly $2.9 billion in 2011, a year which saw revenues grow by more than 10 per cent.

With the increased need to monitor potentially threatening situations at remote distances, government agencies are turning to both unmanned and manned digital surveillance techniques.

At Canada's Queen's University, researchers have created a human-sized 3-D videoconferencing system that allows people in different locations to participate in a video conference as if they were standing in front of each other.

The Automated Imaging Association (AIA, Ann Arbor, MI, USA) announced this week that Paul Kellett will be retiring from his position as Director of Market Analysis at the end of January 2013.