Notes from The Vision Show 2018

June 1, 2018
Held in Boston from April 10-12, The Vision Show 2018—North America’s largest showcase of machine vision and imaging components and solutions—broke all previous records, with more than 2,500 people in attendance, representing a 12% increase over the previous record set in 2016 and featuring more than 150 exhibitors and 23,000 sq. ft. of exhibition space.

I had the great pleasure of attending The Vision Show 2018, North America’s largest showcase of machine vision and imaging components and solutions, from April 10-12. It’s held every other year at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

Featuring a large exhibit of machine vision and imaging components, the show included highlights such as the Embedded Vision Pavilion, the startup competition, and the AIA was kind and gracious enough to allow us to host our fourth Annual Vision Systems Design Innovators Awards ceremony, which we highlight in this month’s cover story.

There were many interesting new product and technology demonstrations, as well as presentations and events at the show. Notably, Helen Greiner, a co-founder of iRobot Corporation and Founder of CyPhy Works, gave an interesting keynote speech about the increased need for more vision in robotics. In the next day’s keynote speech, Diego Prilusky, General Manager at Intel Studios entertained with his presentation about the adoption of “volumetric video” technologies and production techniques by the entertainment industry.

Another interesting event at the show was the Startup Competition where five semi-finalists, which were given booth space on the show floor, had five minutes each to pitch their technology to a panel of investors and vision experts. Fastree3D described how they were going to develop next-generation LiDAR designed for intelligent automation of vehicles and machines. A company called Logograb described how it provides a logo recognition API to detect company logos in large volumes of images and video. Socialmap discussed its social behavior intelligence platform for education and workplace settings, and Vtrus explained its autonomous robotic inspectors that can “quickly extract information out of the analog world.

But the company that won the $5,000 prize was a company called Photius, which utilized products from technology suppliers such as The Imaging Source, NVIDIA, and Hamamatsu to develop its Ximera 3D sensing technology. Ximera hardware utilizes LiDAR, photogrammetry, and structured light technologies to provide “rapid 3D measurement” that the company describes as an automated 3D imaging solution that is fast, affordable, scalable, mobile, and turnkey. The drone-based sensor will be used to inspect structures such as bridges, tunnels, dams, towers, and more. The aim of the sensor is to create 100% complete maps and photo-realistic visualization, and to produce 3D models in “minutes vs. hours.”

Another thing I noticed was that MVTec, Matrox Imaging and Leoni all highlighted deep learning at their booths. While MVTec demonstrated its deep learning technology to check furnace filter material for detects, Matrox debuted its deep learning software by classifying different types of pasta and Leoni put Cognex ViDi software to work in a system it developed to detect defects in carbon fiber composite material. As always, I hope you enjoy this issue!

About the Author

John Lewis | Editor in Chief

John has technical, industry, and journalistic qualifications, most recently with more than 13 years of progressive content development experience working at Cognex Corporation. Prior to Cognex where his articles on machine vision were published in dozens of trade journals, Lewis was a technical editor for Design News, the world's leading engineering magazine, covering automation, machine vision, and other engineering topics since 1996.

B.Sc., University of Massachusetts, Lowell

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