FEBRUARY 16, 2009--Toshi Hori, president of GEViCAM, was presented with the 2009 Automated Imaging Achievement Award during a ceremony held at the Automated Imaging Association's (AIA; Ann Arbor, MI, USA; www.machinevisiononline.org) 17th Annual Business Conference in San Diego, CA, USA.
Hori was nominated by AIA members and selected from a pool of candidates by the association's board of directors, who wished to recognize Hori for his technology innovations and his outstanding contributions to the machine-vision and imaging industry. The award was presented by Michael Cyros, AIA's president and president of Allied Vision Technologies.
"Toshi's many contributions include machine-vision technology inventions he brought to the industry as a pioneering young engineer that are still used in the industry today," said Cyros. "During his long and distinguished career he worked selflessly to bring standardized camera interfaces to our industry, starting with Camera Link and again getting involved in the GigE Vision protocol. Using standard interfaces has allowed manufacturers to reduce costs and bring their products to market faster; this is something that benefits both the manufacturers and users in our industry."
Hori has more than three decades of experience and leadership in machine vision. In 1982, he founded PULNiX America and was an early pioneer in the use of CCD cameras in commercial applications. In 2003 PULNiX was acquired by the JAI Group and he served as president/CEO for PULNiX and CTO for the JAI Group until he left to establish GEViCAM. GEViCAM focuses on the development and production of advanced GigE-based conventional and neural-network-enabled cameras. His many inventions include the electronic-shutter CCD camera for factory automation, progressive-scan interline-transfer CCD cameras, the original Channel Link camera, and neural-network-basedsmart cameras.
The annual award, sponsored by the AIA, honors one industry leader for outstanding contributions in promoting market acceptance of industrial and/or scientific imaging. Among the past winners are industry leaders such as Don Cochran, Pressco Technology; David Dechow, Aptúra Machine Vision Solutions; Steven Case, chairman of CyberOptics Corp.; Norbert Stein of VITRONICS; Savvas Chamberlain of DALSA; Perry West of Automated Vision Systems; Amir Novini of Applied Vision Co.; Nello Zuech of Vision Systems International; Dwight Carlson, formerly of Perceptron; Robert Shillman of Cognex; Ken Levy of KLA-Tencor; Pat Costa of RVSI; and Stan Karandanis of Datacube.