Issues

Browse our previous issues below, or browse and search for specific features or analysis & opinion.

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Keeping track of pharma regulations

26 June 2019

Matthew Dale explores how machine vision integrators are responding to new demands in the pharmaceutical industry

Feature

The sky’s the limit

26 June 2019

Keely Portway looks at new terahertz and infrared technologies being developed to inspect aircraft

Feature

Lighting goes organic

26 June 2019

CCS now offers a range of OLED industrial lighting panels, which are opening up new possibilities in machine vision, writes Paul Downey, marketing manager at CCS Europe

Feature

Updates on OPC Machine Vision

26 June 2019

Suprateek Banerjee, VDMA Robotics and Automation, gives an update on OPC Machine Vision, which provides uniform integration of machine vision systems into higher IT production systems

Zeiss's Smartzoom 5 digital microscope can remove glare from images by using angular illumination

Analysis and opinion

Reaching gigapixel resolution from a five-megapixel camera

23 May 2019

Reporting from the EMVA’s business conference in Copenhagen, Greg Blackman discovers how angular illumination and computational imaging can dramatically improve the resolution of a system

Analysis and opinion

Exploiting embedded vision at EMVA meeting

22 May 2019

Greg Blackman reports on the discussion around embedded vision at the European Machine Vision Association’s business conference in Copenhagen, Denmark in mid-May

Test image at 940nm

Analysis and opinion

Building low-cost infrared sensors with sub-micron films

21 May 2019

Imec is working to industrialise thin-film photodetector stacks on CMOS in order to fabricate low-cost infrared image sensors, as the Belgian institute’s Dr Paweł Malinowski explains

Analysis and opinion

Sticker camera addresses IoT imaging

15 April 2019

Greg Blackman reports on CSEM's Witness IOT camera, an ultra-low power imager that can be deployed as a sticker. Dr Andrea Dunbar presented the technology at Image Sensors Europe in London in March

Analysis and opinion

How to detect drowsiness with a neural net?

5 April 2019

Greg Blackman reports on the complexities of training AllGo Systems' driver monitoring neural networks, which the firm's VP of engineering, Nirmal Kumar Sancheti, spoke about at the Embedded World trade fair

Analysis and opinion

Infrared, China, and 3D stacking: CMOS trends

28 March 2019

Greg Blackman reports from the Image Sensors Europe conference in London, which took place from 13 to 14 March

April/May 2019

Feature

Breakneck speed for board-level processing

29 March 2019

Greg Blackman reports from Embedded World, in Nuremberg, where he finds rapid progress in technology for imaging at the edge

Feature

Detector developments heating up

29 March 2019

Greg Blackman speaks to Sofradir about its €150 million investment to advance infrared sensor technology

Feature

Freefall inspection and other quests for quality

29 March 2019

Ahead of the Control trade fair in May, Greg Blackman speaks to Fraunhofer IPM about three new systems it will present for quality inspection

Feature

Extending reach of robotics

29 March 2019

Andrew Williams explores the vision solutions for robot bin picking

Analysis and opinion

Sony presents next-gen sensor plans at Photonics West

22 February 2019

Ron Low, Framos head of sales Americas and APAC, reports from Framos Tech Days at Photonics West in San Francisco where Sony Japan representatives presented image sensor roadmap updates

Analysis and opinion

Stacked sensor with parallel processing built for fast, edge imaging

19 February 2019

Greg Blackman reports on CEA Leti's new image sensor, shown at Photonics West, which contains onboard processing and is able to image at 5,500 frames per second

February/March 2019

Analysis and opinion

Growth in computer vision gathers pace

20 February 2019

Jeff Bier, founder of the Embedded Vision Alliance, discusses the four key trends driving the proliferation of visual perception in machines

Feature

Food for thought

19 February 2019

The agri-food industry is on the verge of a revolution thanks to advances in precision farming. Machine vision plays a crucial role in these advances, as Keely Portway finds out

Feature

Life in the smart lane

19 February 2019

Matthew Dale discovers how emerging imaging technologies could make our roads safer and help manage congestion

Feature

Reflections on glass making

19 February 2019

Greg Blackman explores some novel ways of imaging glass, including a 3D technique to measure the flatness of glass panels

Analysis and opinion

The argument for free trade

19 February 2019

Anne Wendel, director of VDMA Machine Vision, writes about the importance of free trade for the machine vision sector, and what the VDMA is doing to promote this

December 2018 / January 2019

Feature

Spectral inspection

3 January 2019

Greg Blackman on how advances in lighting, optics, and sensor technology are turning hyperspectral imaging into an industrial inspection tool

Feature

Delivering on e-commerce

3 January 2019

Warehouses are becoming highly automated facilities that rely to a large extent on vision, as Andrew Williams discovers

Feature

Life through a lens

3 January 2019

Matthew Dale discovers embedded processing and new CMOS technology are bringing advances to medical and life science imaging

Feature

Good vibrations

3 January 2019

Greg Blackman reports on the latest lens technology presented during Vision Stuttgart, including optics designed to withstand shock

Analysis and opinion

OPC Vision: next steps

3 January 2019

Dr Reinhard Heister at VDMA Robotics and Automation on the plans for the new OPC Vision standard

October/November 2018

Feature

Eyes on the aisle

16 November 2018

A combination of vision, sensor and deep learning technologies are creating extraordinary developments in retail, writes Matthew Dale

Feature

The next dimension for industrial imaging

15 November 2018

Keely Portway investigates the latest advances in 3D vision equipment, and how they could open up new industrial imaging applications

Feature

Vorsprung durch photonik

15 November 2018

Machine vision technology is improving quality control in automotive manufacturing, writes Andrew Williams

Feature

Old hands, fresh ideas

15 November 2018

Greg Blackman speaks to Torsten Wiesinger at Lucid Vision Labs, one of the newest industrial camera manufacturers on the block

Analysis and opinion

Turning Grand Theft Auto into a deep learning dataset

9 October 2018

A group at the University of Bologna is trying to make images from Grand Theft Auto more realistic so that they can act as training data for neural networks. Greg Blackman listens to Pierluigi Zama Ramirez’s presentation at the European Machine Vision Forum in Bologna in September

Analysis and opinion

Designing inspection systems in a virtual world

27 September 2018

Petra Gospodnetic at Fraunhofer ITWM describes her work building a virtual image processing environment to simulate the design of an inspection system

Analysis and opinion

Innovative imaging tech shortlisted for Vision Stuttgart award

28 August 2018

Technology that advances 3D imaging, makes lenses more resistant to vibration, turns a CMOS camera virtually into a CCD, and makes SWIR imaging less expensive, are all innovations shortlisted for this year’s Vision Award, to be presented at the Vision show in Stuttgart

Vision Yearbook 2018/2019

Analysis and opinion

Consumer and automotive to advance 3D sensing

11 December 2018

Dr Guillaume Girardin, at Yole Développement, sets out some of the forces driving the growth of 3D imaging and sensing technologies

Analysis and opinion

The engine in engineering

11 December 2018

David Dechow, at Integro Technologies, discusses vision system integration, a discipline that remains as strong as ever as new imaging technologies become more readily available

Analysis and opinion

Business development in China

15 November 2018

Dr Shaoxian Zhang, founder of V&A Photonics, discusses the challenges associated with entering the Chinese market

Analysis and opinion

East meets west

15 November 2018

Following the 20th China International Optoelectronic Exposition (CIOE) in September, secretary general Eric Yang, and Derek Deng, international marketing executive, comment on connecting European and Chinese firms

Analysis and opinion

Ties that bind

15 November 2018

Matthew Wasley, knowledge transfer manager of photonics at Innovate UK’s Knowledge Transfer Network, says support is at hand for businesses wanting to collaborate

Feature

Best practice for buyouts

31 October 2018

Greg Blackman reports from the European Machine Vision Association’s business conference, where a panel of industry experts were gathered to give advice on navigating the acquisition process

Feature

Vision of the future

31 October 2018

Keely Portway on some of the key factors that could have an impact on the way the machine vision world does business

Feature

Date with data

31 October 2018

Andrew Williams asks how manufacturers can make better use of their machine vision data

Feature

Preparing for an embedded future

31 October 2018

Greg Blackman spoke to the EMVA’s Arnaud Darmont about plans to establish a standard for embedded vision products

Analysis and opinion

What embedded vision start-ups can learn from machine vision

26 October 2018

Arndt Bake, chief marketing officer of Basler, looks back at the history of machine vision to see what lessons can be applied to the emerging embedded vision market

Analysis and opinion

Recipe for M&A success

26 October 2018

Gabriele Jansen, owner and managing director of Vision Ventures, gives her advice on what makes a successful merger and acquisition transaction

Analysis and opinion

Turning imaging tech into an investment magnet

25 September 2018

Ahead of the Inpho Venture Summit in Bordeaux in October, Géraldine Andrieux, CEO of Blumorpho, gives her four tips to attract investment

August/September 2018

Feature

Neural classification

31 July 2018

Greg Blackman on the deep learning software tools now being deployed in industrial imaging

Feature

Seeing beneath the surface

31 July 2018

Matthew Dale discovers that polarised imaging could soon see a surge in uptake in industrial inspection, thanks to a new sensor from Sony

Feature

Body image

31 July 2018

Keely Portway looks at some of the miniature imaging technology used in endoscopes

Feature

Foundation built on FPGAs

31 July 2018

Active Silicon turns 30 in September. Greg Blackman speaks to founder Colin Pearce (below) on building the company and the importance of FPGA technology

Feature

Damir Dolar

31 July 2018

Damir Dolar, managing director of Croatian firm Smartek Vision, spoke at the European Machine Vision Association’s business conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia, in June. Here, he gives his view on the European industrial imaging market

Analysis and opinion

Imaging simplifies road lighting inspection

18 July 2018

Dr Constantinos Bouroussis, a tunnel lighting expert and a research associate at the National Technical University of Athens’ Lighting Laboratory, describes a mobile imaging system developed to inspect tunnel and road lighting

Analysis and opinion

Best of bin picking at Automatica

22 June 2018

Robot bin picking has been worked on for a number of years, and while it has been shown to be possible it’s only now that the technology is coming to fruition. Greg Blackman looks at what was on display at Automatica

June/July 2018

Feature

Well-oiled machine

15 June 2018

Keely Portway looks at the changing relationship between human and robot in industrial environments, and the latest vision innovations involved in bringing them together

Feature

The science behind sport

15 June 2018

In the run up to the Fifa World Cup, Greg Blackman examines how video analysis is used to improve the performance of top athletes

Analysis and opinion

Enhanced time-of-flight: CMOS solution for automotive lidar

29 May 2018

After speaking at AutoSens Detroit on 16 May, Nadav Haas, product manager at Israeli firm Newsight Imaging, gives his opinion on why the company’s CMOS solution is a good fit for lidar sensing in autonomous driving

Analysis and opinion

Data-driven business models inspired by 3D vision

24 May 2018

Data is now a fiercely guarded asset for most companies and, as the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force, Framos’ Dr Christopher Scheubel discusses potential new business models based on 3D vision data, following a talk he gave at the Embedded Vision Summit in Santa Clara this week

Analysis and opinion

Real-time melt pool monitoring in additive manufacturing

18 May 2018

Dr Christos Theoharatos, chief scientific officer at Irida Labs, describes an imaging system for monitoring the melt pool in additive manufacturing, developed as part of a Horizon 2020 project

Analysis and opinion

Colloidal quantum dot sensor to disrupt SWIR imaging market

23 April 2018

Spin-out firm SWIR Vision Systems is to commercialise colloidal quantum dot infrared sensors, which, the company says, could displace InGaAs technology. Dr Ethan Klem, Allan Hilton, and George Wildeman from the company discuss the performance, fabrication, and cost trade-offs of CQD sensors versus InGaAs

Analysis and opinion

Real commitment for lidar from automotive OEMs

23 March 2018

Lidar could become an important part of autonomous driving and potentially a huge market opportunity for laser and detector manufacturers, as Greg Blackman discovers at the Image Sensors conference in London

April/May 2018

Feature

Imaging on the edge

20 April 2018

Greg Blackman visited the Embedded World conference and exhibition in Nuremberg, Germany, at the end of February to find vision in abundance

Feature

Scanning the skies

20 April 2018

Andrew Williams finds that 3D scanning systems that can pinpoint dents and imperfections on aircraft body panels are being welcomed by aviation businesses to replace manual inspection

Feature

Powering surveillance

20 April 2018

Matthew Dale explores new algorithms, processing boards and interfaces for viewing images, all for improving airborne surveillance

Feature

News from VDMA Machine Vision

20 April 2018

Anne Wendel, director of VDMA Machine Vision, reports from the joint VDMA and Vision CEO roundtable event at the beginning of February

Analysis and opinion

Reusing code in embedded vision applications

8 March 2018

Migrating software code from a PC to an embedded system to run vision applications presents various challenges. Following a presentation he gave at Embedded World in Nuremberg, Germany last week, Frank Karstens, field application engineer at Basler, gives his advice on the task

Analysis and opinion

Building embedded IR imaging devices: what to consider

16 February 2018

Ahead of his presentation at the Embedded World conference in Nuremberg, Germany on 28 February, Adam Taylor from Adiuvo Engineering and Training specifies what engineers need to consider when building an embedded infrared vision system for IoT and IIoT

February/March 2018

Feature

Automating grocery shopping

27 March 2018

Matthew Dale explores how online supermarket Ocado is using 3D vision to automate its warehouses

Feature

Super-positioned cameras

27 March 2018

Greg Blackman looks at novel imaging devices based on quantum science, and finds that the technology is closer to commercialisation than first expected

Feature

Tracking traffic

27 March 2018

Andrew Williams explores the latest imaging technologies for traffic monitoring, including how AI could be used to make sense of all that data

Feature

Strides made in polarisation sensors

27 March 2018

Harald Neubauer, Jürgen Ernst and Dr Michael Schöberl at Fraunhofer IIS describe the team’s prototype polarisation camera, Polka2, which was presented at Image Sensors Europe in London in March

Feature

Maximising multispectral

27 March 2018

After presenting at Image Sensors Europe in London, Dr Piet De Moor, senior business development manager, imagers at Imec, discusses a multispectral time delay and integration image sensor based on CCD-in-CMOS technology

Feature

Comparing CMOS performance

27 March 2018

Albert Theuwissen, founder of Harvest Imaging, outlines a project to classify performance characteristics of CMOS image sensors

Feature

Improved quality from smaller pixels needed for factories

27 March 2018

Michael DeLuca, industrial solutions division of On Semiconductor, on the image sensor technology needs for machine vision

Feature

Making SWIR more affordable

27 March 2018

Sebastien Frasse-Sombet, product line manager at Sofradir, on new, more affordable SWIR detectors

Feature

Global shutter for ADAS

27 March 2018

Cliff Cheng, senior director of automotive marketing at OmniVision Technologies, details its latest global shutter sensor for industrial and automotive imaging

Feature

News from VDMA Machine Vision, UKIVA and EMVA

27 March 2018

Chinese automation from Anne Wendel, director of VDMA Machine Vision; Paul Wilson talks about self-driving delivery robots at the UKIVA Machine Vision Conference; and Thomas Lübkemeier updates on the EMVA's events calendar