Many years ago, I made a mistake that no man should ever make. I forgot my own wedding anniversary. Luckily, after being sent to Coventry for a number of days, I managed to bribe my way back into my wife’s favor with the purchase of an array of expensive products. As our married readers will know, traditional gift ideas should be considered on such occasions. While a paper gift is recommended for a first year anniversary, those lucky enough to have survived twenty years of marriage should be given china.
If many of you shudder at the thought of being with someone you love for twenty years, imagine what it would be like working with the same people for such a long period of time? Once again, I have first-hand experience since this month marks the 20th anniversary of the publication ofVision Systems Design.
Of the original founders, there are few of us left - one of whom - the indefatigable Judy Leger - has accompanied me on numerous airline trips, tradeshows and conferences around the world. As Judy will attest, surviving my company for two decades is no mean feat and, like any marriage, we have had our ups and downs. Luckily, we are not married and so I have never had the experience of her throwing a china dinner plate at me!
Upon its initial publication in 1996, Vision Systems reported on the numerous companies involved in developing OEM products such as cameras, frame grabbers and machine vision software that are used by developers building machine vision and image processing systems. Today, the same is true. More importantly, the magazine’s focus on the design of such systems provides readers with an insight into how such OEM products can be used effectively.
Needless to say, in future, OEM products will continually improve becoming faster, less expensive and easier to use, making the development of such systems more cost-effective. At the same time, technologies such as 3D printing, image interpretation software, 3D vision systems and intelligent robotic systems will allow increasingly sophisticated systems to be built.
Twenty years ago, it was easy to imagine the effect that machine vision would have on industrial automation, eliminating the repetitive, sometimes dangerous and error prone tasks once performed by man. However, few predicted that due, in part, to machine vision and image processing technology self-driving cars, low-cost vision-equipped drones and autonomous robots would even appear on the horizon. WhenVision Systems Design celebrates its 40th anniversary, it may well be other technologies such as quantum computing, virtual reality and holographic displays that will have reshaped the vision landscape.
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