Arnaud Darmont, the European Machine Vision Association’s standards manager, has died on 12 September after an accident in the White Sands National Monument in New Mexico, USA.
Darmont was travelling to the area prior to the International Vision Standards Meeting in Austin, Texas from 17 to 21 September.
‘With the death of Arnaud, the EMVA and in more general the entire imaging industry lost a bright and driven person who contributed significantly to both educating and advancing the industry,’ said EMVA president Jochem Herrmann. ‘Arnaud will be terribly missed. Our thoughts are with his parents and his brother.’
Darmont dedicated his professional life to the computer vision industry. After his degree in electronic engineering from University of Liège in Belgium in 2002 he began work in the field of CMOS image sensors and high dynamic range imaging.
Darmont founded his own enterprise Aphesa in 2008. He authored several publications and was author of the book ‘High dynamic range imaging – sensors and architectures’, which was published in a first edition in 2013. He was finishing the second edition to appear this year.
A strong focus of his work was the dissemination of his knowledge within the vision community and to newcomers in the computer vision domain through training and custom electronics design of imaging devices. He had prepared to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of Aphesa at the end of this month.
Since the very beginning of his professional career, Darmont was an active member of the EMVA 1288 standardisation group. ‘By his profound knowledge of image sensors and by his rich experience he helped to shape the EMVA 1288 standard to the globally used standard it is today. Arnaud was also busy advertising the standard all around the globe giving courses and educating the machine vision community,’ said Professor Dr Bernd Jähne, chair of the EMVA 1288 standard froup and EMVA board member.
In 2017 Deltatec became the electronic design and software development partner of Aphesa, meaning Darmont gained freedom to devote more of his professional time to education and standardisation activities. He joined the EMVA as standards manager in December 2017. In this position he oversaw the development of EMVA standards, but also fostered cooperation with other imaging associations worldwide on the development and the dissemination of vision standards.
‘We all remember how Arnaud took this role with enthusiasm and high commitment. Though he served in this position for a bit less than a year, he facilitated the start of two new EMVA standards, and built bridges to other associations. As such, he established links with standards groups of IEEE and was an active member of SPIE and IS&T. The foundation he led during this time will be part of his legacy to the entire machine vision industry,’ said EMVA president Jochem Herrmann.
Darmont was an active member of local associations. He had a passion for photography and piloted private planes as a hobby.
