Volcanic Emissions

In myth, Jason and his brave band of Argonauts sailed up the Bosphorus strait separating Europe and Asia, passing the current site of Istanbul and into the Black Sea to retrieve the Golden Fleece. Similar tall tales are now being told by participants at the European Machine Vision Association business conference, recently held in Istanbul. These voyagers found a multitude of means—chartered bus to propeller-driven aircraft—to make their way home as The Cloud from the Icelandic volcano closed down airports across Europe.

The perils faced by these hardy vendors of machine-vision products are usually more of an economic or technical nature, and in this regard the sailing looks to be smoother ahead. As markets rebound from The Great Recession of 2008–09—which saw close to a 30% drop in sales for the machine-vision market—estimates by the EMVA are for a 10% rebound in Europe in 2010.

Several executives at the conference reported an extremely strong sales spike across all application sectors but still remain conservative in their spending pending a second quarter of strong growth. The Vision Show in Boston (May 25–27) and then Automatica in Munich (June 8–11) should hopefully provide more evidence of a sound recovery.

The Golden Fleece

Innovations from vendors of machine-vision product are, of course, driven by their customers: the system integrators and end users who are the primary subject of and audience forVision Systems Design.

For example, in our cover story, contributing editor Winn Hardin describes a vision-guided robotic system developed by system integrator Neovision that places front ends on automobiles manufactured by ŠKODA in the Czech Republic. In aerospace engineering applications, editor Andy Wilson reports on how Optics for Hire has worked with GE Global Research Center to develop a handheld imager that makes precise measurements of components. In his Product Focus article, Wilson shows how vendors are providing system integrators with more choices and a wider range of software options in smart cameras.

Andy Wilson also writes about such emerging applications for machine vision as ophthalmology, pharmaceutical tablet inspection, tuberculosis diagnosis, and digitizing movie film. Like Ray Harryhausen, whose Dynarama process brought to life stop-motion characters in his classic 1963 filmJason and the Argonauts, engineers will also leverage the power of technology to bring these and more sophisticated applications to life. Let's just hope the journey for the Golden Fleece is not as perilous for those in marketing and sales!