[Page 2] Machine vision integrator spotlight: Integro Technologies

Editor’s note: This article is continued from page one.

How have market changes and customer demands changed the way that you’ve approached business?

Customers are demanding more fully-integrated turnkey inspection cells rather than system retrofits. This is primarily due to customer internal time constraints and minimization of potential issues on system delivery associated with existing sub-systems.

This demand shift also occurs as more customers are now having their assembly machine builder responsible for designing and implementing their quality control inspection points and processes (checks and balances). With this market change, we have staffed accordingly to accommodate our customers’ needs and listen intently to properly support and serve them in the future.

Do you have any new exciting products or developments on the horizon?

VisionVault will be expanded in the future to support existing and new Cognex platforms as customers demand this level of user access control and data collection to satisfy regulatory requirements or just to provide greater managed control of their inspection processes.

We continue to combine high-resolution 3D point clouds with high-accuracy multispectral 2D scans (+21GB) to yield measurement accuracy in three axes of <3um. Refinement of the image formation, stitching, mapping, and data overlays permits the creation of unique application solutions for a variety of industries.

As part of our 20thanniversary, we are taking a look back at the past 20 years, while also trying to predict where the industry will be in 20 years. Can you give a few predictions on some things you expect to happen within the near future, and what the industry might look like in 20 years?

I began my career in machine vision in 1995 while at Penn State University. At that point in time, 50Mhz/400MHz dedicated embedded processor boards were deployed in a PC supporting 4-8 cameras with limited cable lengths due to RS-170 signal quality.

With 10GigE and fiber connections, the distance limitations are effectively eliminated, and virtualized servers provide excessive processing power for high-speed or high-data volume applications. I believe the industrial machine vision architecture will shift to clustered servers running virtual server software utilizing 10GigE or faster hardware transfer methodology in the near future.

The continued decrease in cost for cameras and optics, and coulpled with increasing camera deployments per facility will drive the market away from localized/discrete processing. This transition has already begun at high-volume power users to minimize implementation costs for basic applications, but will take years to become the norm. The pending architectural shift will neutralize the hardware centric sensor base market and shift focus back to core software development and multi-threading code implementation on clustered servers.

View more information on Integro Technologies.

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