imaging and machine vision europe june/july 2010 www.imveurope.com


8


profile A global eye on vision


Warren Clark looks at the strategies employed by Sony’s Image Sensing Solutions Europe division and what it means to operate as part of a multinational company


In an industry populated by relatively small companies, many of them entrepreneurial start-ups or university spin-outs, it is perhaps unusual to find a global name such as Sony. But, along with other big name brands, such as Hitachi, Panasonic and Toshiba, Sony sees potential in the industrial vision market, and has a huge network of technical expertise on which to call in order for it to develop competitive products. Sony Image Sensing Solutions Europe,


which is currently part of the Semiconductor and Electronics Solutions Group within Sony Europe Ltd, covers a broad range of camera solutions, principally in machine vision and visual communication. The latter covers applications such as visual and corporate communications, broadcasting, video conferencing and more.


‘Customers want products that are smaller, better, faster and, yes, cheaper’


Relevant to this market, Sony’s foray into machine vision can be traced back almost 30 years, when the company was a pioneer in CCD technology in the very early 1980s. First used in the broadcast industry, these sensors were soon utilised in an industrial environment. Sony began to develop its first industrial camera, the XC-1, which met the requirements of factory usage – such as shock resistance, broad operating temperature, resistance to severe environmental conditions. By the mid-90s, industry needs had moved


on, and the first camera with external trigger functionality was introduced to the Sony line- up, which paved the way for more reliable automatic inspection. With a focus on careful


Sony Image Sensing Solutions Europe offices, Paris, France


alignment of the CCD and lens, the product helped cement Sony’s reputation for producing high quality, reliable products for an industrial marketplace. Myriam Beraneck is product marketing manager for Sony Image Sensing Solutions Europe, which is based in Paris, France. ‘Product quality is hugely important to us,’ she says. ‘We invest great care in our manufacturing process, and have many quality control checks. We understand that our cameras will be required to stay in place – often in harsh environments – for a long time. Our products need to be robust and reliable to endure that time and those conditions.’ One of the most significant moments in


Sony’s association with the machine vision industry was its pioneering work in the first 1394 draft standard in the mid-1990s, and the company has retained a strong link to FireWire ever since – although not to the exclusion of other interface technologies, such as Camera Link and GigE Vision. There has been a quick uptake of GigE


Vision interfaces, and Sony has reacted to this with new products. ‘GigE is much more established now than it was a couple of years ago,’ says Beraneck. ‘That means we have much more confidence in it as an interface,


and are now in a better position to develop products that optimise it.’ Today’s machine vision market is a lot more competitive than it was 30 years ago. At various times, Sony was the only company to produce CCDs for industrial applications, and the only company to have FireWire-compliant cameras. Now, it faces competition from other CCD manufacturers, such as Kodak, and alternative sensor technologies, such as CMOS. Beraneck, though, is confident that Sony


has the technology and reliability to see off its competitors in the long run. ‘It’s true that customers always want products that are smaller, better, faster and, yes, cheaper. However, it remains the case that one simply cannot do better with less. ‘Yes, there are cheaper products available,


but will they last more than a couple of years, and will they deliver the quality of image that the customer really needs? It will be interesting to see in a couple of years just how many of these cheaper competitors are still around, after their customers reject their products for being inadequate. Sony has been around long enough to have been through the same cycle many times, and we’re confident that our customers are never disappointed from a quality or reliability point of view.’


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