Vision System Design announces 2016 Innovators Awards

For the second year in a row, Vision Systems Design held its Innovators Awards program, which celebrates the disparate and innovative technologies, products and systems found in the machine vision and image processing industry.

James Carroll,Senior Web Editor

Submissions toVision Systems Design's Innovators Awards were reviewed by an expert panel of third-party judges that consisted of:

• William Schramm, President, PVI Systems (Niantic, CT, USA;www.pvisys.com)
• Robert Tait, Optical Metrologist/Machine Vision at General Electric Global Research (Niskayuna, NY, USA; www.geglobalresearch.com)
• Earl Yardley, Director, Industrial Vision Systems (Kingston Bagpuize, UK; www.industrialvision.co.uk)
• Adam Phillip, MDA Corp (Richmond, Canada; www.mdacorporation.com)
• Wes Henderson, Director of Business Development, Hermary Machine Vision (Coquitlam, BC, Canada; www.hermarymachinevision.com)
• Steve Varga, Imaging and Instrumentation R&D, Procter & Gamble USA (Cincinnati, OH, USA; us.pg.com)
• Prof. Dr.-Ing. Stefan Werling, Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University Mannheim Mechatronik (Mannheim, Germany; www.dhbw.de)
• Rick van de Zedde, Senior researcher / business developer Computer Vision, Wageningen UR Food & Biobased Research (Wageningen, The Netherlands; www.wageningenur.nl)

Based on the impartial ratings assigned by our judges, awards were assigned in four different levels -Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum - to companies or organizations that demonstrated excellence in a product or technology, an application or in research and development.

Submissions were judged on originality; innovation; their impact on designers, systems integrators or users; whether they fulfilled a new market need; leveraged a novel technology and/or increased productivity.

To celebrate our second annual Innovators Awards Program,Vision Systems Design held a reception on the show floor of The Vision Show 2016 on May 3, 2016, where many representatives from companies at the show were on hand to accept their awards from Andy Wilson, Editor-in-Chief and Alan Bergstein, Publisher of Vision Systems Design.

"Recognizing cutting edge technologies and products in the vision industry is the aim of our Innovators Awards program," said Bergstein. "This year, I am pleased to note that the Second Annual Awards saw even more companies being recognized for their innovative technologies, products, and systems."

Further coverage ofVision Systems Design's Innovators Awards can be found at www.vision-systems.com.

2016 Innovators Awards: BRONZE-level honorees

Emergent Vision Technologies (Coquitlam, BC, Canada; http://emergentvisiontec.com) - 10GigE cameras. Emergent Vision Technologies' 10GigE cameras, the HT-2000, HT-4000, HT-12000, and HT-20000 feature CMOS image sensors from CMOSIS (from 2MPixel to 20MPixel) and achieve frame rates of 338fps, 179fps, 84fps, and 32fps, respectively.

di-soric Solutions (Urbach, Germany; www.di-soric.com) - Machine Vision 4.0. Machine Vision 4.0 is a system which integrates image processing into the Siemens totally integrated automation (TIA) portal.

FANUC America (Rochester Hills, MI, USA; www.fanucamerica.com) -FANUC 3D Area Sensor.FANUC's 3D area sensor, which is designed for use in robotic guidance applications such as bin picking, acquires 3D point clouds using stereo vision with visible, structured light.

FocalSpec (Oulu, Finland; www.focalspec.com) High-resolution 3D Line Confocal Imaging (LCI) Sensors. - 3D Line Confocal Imaging (LCI) Sensors perform non-contact optical measurements at speeds of up to 1,000,000 3D points/s. The sensors feature a GigE interface and are available in four different models, three in the visible light spectrum and one dual-point IR sensor.

Micro/sys (Montrose, CA, USA; www.embeddedsys.com) - Blazing Frames SBC4661. Blazing Frames SBC4661 is a 1GHz Quad Core Cortex-A9 single board computer with multiple video ports, quad USB 3.0 and dual GigE that features a programmable Kintex-7 FPGA.

Microscan (Renton, WA, USA; www.microscan.com) - MicroHAWK.MicroHAWK industrial barcode readers from Microscan are industrial barcode readers and are available in the ID-20, ID-30, and ID-40 models. The barcode feature an option of 0.34MPixel, 1.2MPixel, or 5MPixel CMOS image sensors, and frame rates of up to 60fps, 42fps, and 5fps, respectively.

Neousys Technology (New Taipei City, Taiwan; www.neousys-tech.com) - Nuvo-5000E/P Series. The Nuvo-5000 is the 6th-Gen Core i7/i5/i3 CPU Skylake Vision Computer with PoE+, GigE, USB3 ports and runs Windows and Linux.

Newnex Technology (Santa Clara, CA, USA; www.newnex.com) - FireNEX-5000HTM Optical Repeater with Power Delivery.In addition to extending USB 3.0 cable lengths to 300m, the FireNEX-5000H USB 3.0 optical repeater delivers bus power up to 100m via a hybrid cable and features USB3 Vision-compliant locking.

Theia Technologies (Wilsonville, OR, USA; www.theiatech.com) - 4K 1/1.8in Lens family. Two 4k lenses cover the larger image format of 1/1.8in sensors. The SL/TL410 lens covers a 4-10mm focal range while the SL/TL1250 telephoto lens covers a 12-50mm range.

Tordivel AS (Oslo, Norway; www.tordivel.no) - Scorpion 3D Stinger for Robot Vision. Tordivel's Scorpion 3D stinger for robot vision identifies and locates any part in 3D with sub-pixel accuracy. The system features one or more Stinger stereo vision cameras, each of which consists of two cameras (VGA to 5MPixel), a number of projector options, and an algorithm to locate 3D features.

Vieworks (Gyeonggi-do, Republic of Korea; www.vieworks.com) - VT-18KX-H80 / Hybrid TDI Line Scan Camera. The VT-18KX-H80 TDI line-scan camera features a hybrid 17824 × 256 TDI sensor that runs at 80kHz.

VISION FOR VISION (Seraing, Belgium; www.visionforvision.eu) - Norma - Blob shape recognition.The working principle of the Norma blob shape recognition is to perform shape recognition on every detected blog by comparison to predefined or pre-trained shapes. Pre-defined shapes are chosen among regular polygons, circles, and similar objects, while pre-trained shapes are simply learned from an available image.

Ximea (Münster, Germany; www.ximea.com) - Thunderbolt enabled industrial cameras - xiT line.Thunderbolt-enabled industrial cameras eliminate frame grabbers and feature a bandwidth of 20Gbit/s. Cables range up to 60m and capture images from cameras with CMV20000 and IMX174 CMOS image sensors.

Z-LASER Optoelektronik (Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany; www.z-laser.com) - Robot guided opto-mechanical assembly and alignment process for machine vision laser. The company has created an opto-mechanical alignment and assembly process for laser systems that uses a 14-axis robotic system to align laser diode and optical components with an alignment accuracy of up to 200nm.

2016 Innovators Awards: silver-level honorees

Basler (Ahrensburg, Germany; www.baslerweb.com) - PGI Feature Set. PGI Feature Set is an in-camera image optimization engine for color cameras based on a combination of 5 x 5 de-Bayering, color anti-aliasing and de-noising. PGI operates in the camera and is designed to obtain the best possible image quality without loss of speed or increase of processor load.

Edmund Optics (Barrington, NJ, USA; www.edmundoptics.com) - TECHSPEC Cx Series fixed focal length lenses. The Cx Series of lenses feature a modular three-piece design that incorporate fixed apertures, internal filter holders or liquid lenses into the assembly. The three pieces (front, middle, and back) can be separated and manipulated to allow for shifting and changing of optical elements.

MoviTHERM (Irvine, CA, USA; movitherm.com) - MIO Series Intelligent I/O Solution for FLIR Cameras. MIO Series is an Ethernet based, intelligent input/output module, compatible with FLIR A310(f) and FLIR AX8 cameras. The module turns FLIR cameras into a remote monitoring system. A webserver interface allows for configuration of eight digital alarm outputs.

Photometrics (Tucson, AZ, USA; www.photometrics.com) - Prime sCMOS Camera. Prime incorporates a field progrmmable gate array (FPGA) to enable real-time processing and features a 4.2MPixel sCMOS image sensor while the FPGA is used to reduce photon shot-noise and provide an increase in signal-to-noise rato (SNR).

2016 Innovators Awards: gold-level honorees

CCS America (Burlington, MA, USA; www.ccsamerica.com) - Pattern Blazer structured light projector. The CCD Pattern Blazer is an LED fixed-pattern projector for structured lighting in 3D machine vision. It uses an LED source and Four Thirds DSLR optics and can be equipped with any LED wavelength from the UVA to the NIR.

Chiaro Technologies (Boulder, CO, USA; http://chiarotech.com) - Cloudburst 3D camera. The Cloudburst 3D depth camera is based on Symbolic Light, a technology for single-shot structured light 3D capture. The camera provides motion capable, calibrated 3D data with a machine vision interface and API.

e2v (Chelmsford, England; www.e2v.com) -Embedded active imaging feature in Onyx sensors and cameras. e2v's Onyx 1.3MPixel CMOS image sensor features an embedded imaging system synchronizing external illumination and internal electronic shuttering. This allows discernible color images to be produced at low-light levels and through diffusing environments (e.g. fog and smoke).

Gardasoft Vision (Cambridge, England; www.gardasoft.com) - Triniti CL - Camera, Light, Lens Control. With the addition of lens controllers to the Gardasoft Triniti intelligent lighting platform, developers can configure, program and monitor cameras, lighting and lenses - all from within one common graphical environment.

Keyence Corporation of America (Itasca, IL, USA; www.keyence.com) - Auto-Teach Inspection Tool. Keyence's Auto-Teach Inspection Tool algorithm learns a sample of known good parts and uses statistics to automatically set the ideal tolerances for rejecting bad parts, even those parts with defects that were unexpected at the time of setup.

LMI Technologies(Delta, BC, Canada; www.lmi3d.com) - Gocator 3109 Smart Snapshot Sensor. The Gocator 3109 is an industrial fringe projection sensor providing three-dimensional (3D) acquisition and inspection for factory automation applications. The sensor features a footprint of 4 x 100 x 155mm and achieves a scan rate of 5Hz.

Mettler toledo (Columbus, OH, USA; www.mt.com) - CI-Vision - V2410 Mosaic-Paneled. The V2410 Mosaic-Paneled is a turnkey system for print and label inspections on round products with a slim profile. Instead of a stitching algorithm, the system places six cameras equidistantly around the product, which are used to find the best possible image of the item being inspected. Each camera's FOV overlaps with the FOV of the two cameras next to it in the array, eliminating the danger of warped or distorted inspection elements.

ON Semiconductor (Phoenix, AZ, USA; www.onsemi.com) - KAE-02150 Image Sensor. The KAE-02150 image sensor is a 2.1MPixel interline transfer EMCCD sensor that enables continuous capture from low light (0.01 lux) through bright daylight. Incorporating both Interline Transfer and EMCCD technologies.

Opto Engineering(Mantova, Italy; www.opto-engineering.com) - CORE series. CORE series are telecentric lenses and illuminators. They operate in reduced space, allowing users to build compact measurement machines.

Optotune (Dietikon, Switzerland; www.optotune.com) - Electrically focus tunable lens EL-16-40-TC.The EL-16-40-TC features a 16mm clear aperture and is based on an elastic polymer membrane which conceals an optical fluid. A voice coil actuator pushes or pulls the membrane to pump liquid into the center to deflect the lens to be convex or concave.

Princeton Infrared Technologies (Monmouth Junction, NJ, USA; www.princetonirtech.com) - 1280SciCam The 1280SciCam camera features a 1280 x 1024 lattice-matched InGaAs IR detector with a 12μm pixel pitch that can achieve frame rates of 95fps full-frame. The camera operates in the 0.4-1.7μm range and features a 3-stage thermoelectric cooler.

Teledyne DALSA (Waterloo, ON, Canada; www.teledynedalsa.com) - TurboDrive.TurboDrive data encoding technology lets GigE Vision cameras overcome current bandwidth limitations - increasing throughput by as much as 150%, retaining 100% of image data.

2016 Innovators Awards: platinum-level honorees

Smart Vision Lights (Muskegon, MI, USA; www.smartvisionlights.com) - Line High Power series LED light for line scan imaging applications. Smart Vision Lights' line high power (LHP) is the first commercial machine vision LED light to use silicone optics. The LHP light offers intensity levels of greater than 5M Lux and features water cooling.

Stemmer Imaging (Puchheim, Germany; www.stemmer-imaging.de) - Intuitive hyperspectral imaging system. Stemmer Imaging and Perception Park have introduced hyperspectral imaging systems for industrial applications based on Chemical Color Imaging (CCI) technology. These systems can identify the unique fingerprints of objects based on their chemical and molecular properties.

Systech International (Princeton, NJ, USA: http://systechone.com) - UniSecure. UniSecure is a brand and product protection software that identifies usable artifacts in printed symbols (typically barcodes of various types) and stores them as signature data that uniquely identifies the mark. This signature data is derived from the physical and optical characteristics of the mark's geometry and appearance and is stored in the Cloud for authentication via a mobile app.

Viewbits - Division of Computer Modules (San Diego, CA, USA; www.viewbits.com) - Fiber Cam III - 1.3 Mpixel X-ray camera with GigE output. The Fiber Cam III is a digital X-ray camera that can capture clear X-ray images with standard CCD sensors. It uses a Gadolinium Oxysulphide (GdOS) coating spread across a 25mm fiber optic bundle that is bonded to a 1388 x 1040 digital camera with a GigE interface.

On behalf of the entireVision Systems Design team, we would like to all of the companies who submitted to our second annual Innovators Awards program, and congratulations to all of our honorees. We hope that this award program helped bring some of the most innovative products technologies in the market into focus.