News In brief
Stemmer Imaging has concluded its acquisition of Spanish group Infaimon. Stemmer expects an additional revenue contribution of around €18m and an EBITDA contribution of around €3m in the 2019/2020 financial year.
Framos can now connect its embedded vision sensor modules with hardware from 96boards, a range of hardware specifications created by Linaro to make the Arm-based processors available to developers at a reasonable cost.
Corning has delivered its two millionth Corning Varioptic liquid lens for industrial applications. This milestone was driven by an increased demand for liquid lenses in manufacturing and warehouse operations.
Japanese firm Macnica completes ATD Electronique acquisition
J
apanese electronics supplier, Macnica, has completed its acquisition of ATD Electronique.
Based in Chatou, France, ATD specialises
in electronic component distribution, especially image sensors, optics and image processing integrated circuits. Macnica bought 49 per cent of ATD in 2016. Founded in 1990, ATD represents image
sensor suppliers Sony, Ams, and Sofradir, now called Lynred, and optics providers Corning and Tamron, along with other electronic component suppliers. With headquarters in Yokohama, Japan,
Macnica had consolidated sales of 481.2bn yen (€4bn) in the 2018 fiscal year. It employs 2,960 people and has subsidiaries in 80 cities in 23 countries. Te founder and president of ATD,
Antoine Hide, will continue in his position at the company. Hide said that joining the Macnica group will enable ATD to enhance
its system-level design support for imaging applications. It will now be able to offer peripheral
hardware and intellectual property developed and owned by Macnica, along with image sensors and relevant ICs to support machine vision and video-over-IP for broadcast applications. ‘We are very pleased to have ATD in
our group to extend our geographical coverage and customer base in Europe,’ said Kazumasa Hara, president and co-CEO of Macnica. ‘ATD’s focus on technical support for semiconductor products, especially for imaging applications, fits perfectly into our business strategy and will directly contribute to improved productivity at our customers through the proliferation of camera-based digital transformation of factory floors.’ ATD’s product portfolio, along with
Macnica’s imaging IP, will be shown at Measurement World in Paris in September.
Embedded vision expands market potential By Mark Williamson, director of corporate marketing at Stemmer Imaging
and board member of VDMA Machine Vision
Powerful developments in the field of embedded vision have already changed the machine vision landscape considerably in recent years and will continue to do so. The resulting effects were discussed by high-ranking participants at this year’s EMVA business conference in Copenhagen in mid-May. Three board members of VDMA Machine Vision participated. The experts were in agreement that embedded vision is already so important in the industry today, that no machine vision company can afford to exist without this technology and corresponding products in the near future. For the existing machine vision
market, embedded technology represents a chance to think beyond well-known application areas and find use cases that fit embedded vision characteristics.
Costs of components and complete embedded vision systems are considerably lower than those of traditional PC-based architectures, but with significantly higher development costs. For this reason, embedded vision developments usually need high quantities to amortise.
Progress from the consumer sector The current development focus is on systems-on-chip (SoC). Companies such as Sony and Intel are adding more functionality to their products at the semiconductor level that can be used for image processing. These technologies are usually developed for mass markets, rather than for the machine vision niche, so one of the challenges is to identify these expanded opportunities and leverage existing strengths for effective deployment
10 Imaging and Machine Vision Europe • August/September 2019
in appropriate user industries. ‘The development speed of the individual components required for embedded vision systems remains enormously high,’ observed Dr Klaus-Henning Noffz, chairman of the board of VDMA Machine Vision, and CEO of Silicon Software. ‘Embedded vision has now reached a technical level that already enables powerful, economical systems.’ Participants in the panel discussion, however, did not share the view that embedded vision will challenge the raison d’être of traditional image processing. Functionality and performance of conventional vision systems are still improving, firstly, and programmers have a lot of experience developing PC-based systems and algorithms. Although the knowhow for creating embedded vision solutions is
growing rapidly, it is not yet available on the market to a comparable extent. One of the challenges for embedded vision, therefore, is to expand knowledge, for example about Linux or Cuda for GPU programming, and transferring the existing application-specific knowhow to the new technology. Embedded vision standardisation at all levels will be a key element. Dr Olaf Munkelt, managing director of MVTec Software and board member of VDMA Machine Vision, said: ‘Classic image processing will survive, as there is still a demand for high-end solutions with corresponding cameras and frame grabbers. However, many applications that were considered high-end a few years ago can probably soon be addressed with embedded vision.’
@imveurope
www.imveurope.com
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