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Intelligent Camera celebrates its tenth anniversary |
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Michael Engel, the founder of Vision Components® ist a real pioneer in industrial Machine Vision. He developed the first industrial Smart Camera. This year at the Vision 2005, Vision Components® celebrates the tenth anniversary of this fundamental innovation.
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| In 1995, at the „Vision“ in Stuttgart, Engel showed the first intelligent camera to interested customers. „This was a real sensation“, Engel remembers with pride. „On the show I met Don Braggins, who was writing a column for ‚Image Processing’ at that time. I showed the prototype of the VC11 to Don, who was very enthusiastic about the new product. He insisted in taking a photograph of me with the camera in my hand“. The photo was published in the magazine and word of mouth spread quickly. |
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„The VC11 of those days had all the features that characterize a good Smart Camera“, says Engel who holds a degree as a graduate physicist.
Engel, who had a lot of experience installing vision systems in the industrial environment, knew all about the requirements for such a product. The camera had to be mechanically robust and electrically well designed against electrical spikes and electromagnetic radiation. Otherwise it could well turn out to be a nightmare for the integrator of such a system.
In addition, the product had to be less expensive than conventional systems in order to gain market share. The device needed to feature a fast processor to compete with PC-systems, which were quite popular at that time. “This is only feasible with DSPs”, Engel is convinced: “you can’t put a current-guzzling processor of an office PC into a box in the size of a mobile phone, it will simply get too hot”.
In 1996, Engel established Vision Components® and hired the first employee.
From that time on, the company increased their business steadily.
„Today we achieve around five-and-a-half million Euros in revenues with a staff of 12 employees“, Engel is pleased. Currently, the company manufactures the third generation of Smart Cameras. And the innovator moves forward at a remarkable pace. “On this year’s Vision”, we’ll be exhibiting as many as 14 new models”, Engel smiles.
The models differ in the resolution of the CCD and the speed of the built-in DSP; there is even a linescan Smart Camera in the portfolio.
“Surely, everybody is talking about processor performance, and in this respect we have a neat new product line with 8000 MIPS which is quite advanced. But speed is not everything. The product needs to be easily programmable and there must be a competent support-team, that’s more important”.
The company therefore provides a software library with powerful image processing functions to customers.
„There are dozens of example programs and we organize programming tutorials and even training seminars teaching fundamentals of image processing on a regular basis“, says Engel.
If the customer should need help at some point, the support crew with 4 members is readily available to advise instantly or write small software functions on request.
„There are like a hundred software packages on the market, mostly for special industry sectors, about half a dozen general-purpose packages, but powerful third-party libraries like Halcon as well”, the entrepreneur knows: “It is quite realistic, that we have defined the standard in this field”.
Customers can be found in the printing industry, where ultra-short exposure times and external triggering is a must, in the pharmaceutical and in the automobile industry, in mechanical engineering and electronic assembly.
“There is hardly any problem in Machine Vision, that cannot be solved with our intelligent cameras”, says Engel with self-confidence: “There is even a number of ‘exotic’ application like for sports, mobile systems and in space”. What he means is a number of Smart Cameras, that his company supplied for a satellite, responsible for the precise adjustment of the space object against the distant stars.
Shipping quantities are in the range from typically ten to a hundred per year and customer. “For the really big numbers from several hundred to thousand, we offer intelligent board cameras with a really low price tag“, Engel states.
Longtime availability is also an important factor. „For many new hastily developed competitor’s products, the customer does not really know how long they will be available on the market“, says Engel with a mischievous smile: “I know of a smart camera product of a well-known video-camera manufacturer, which recently disappeared silently out of the shelves. Our VC11 model of the year 1995 is still available”
The Vision Components Family
Vision Components® in numbers and facts
1995 first intelligent camera VC11first smart camera with SVGA monitor output (VC21)
1996 formation of the Vision Components® GmbH
1997 first smart camera with progressive scan CCD (VC65) in black-and-white and color
1998 first megapixel Smart Camera (VC67) and first intelligent board camera (SBC11),
2000 first intelligent camera with TI DSP and FPGA (VC2038)
2001 jitterless and overlapping external image triggering
2002 Ethernet and TCP/IP for Smart Cameras
2003 first intelligent sensor camera with integrated illumination and IP65-housing (VCM30)
2005 first intelligent color camera with 24bit True Color display (VC2065EC) Smart Camera with Gigahertz DSP (VC44xx) new series VC401x with further reduced form-factor intelligent linescan camera (VC4002L)
Who is … ?
Michael Engel, born in 1956, Dipl. Phys., works in the field of industrial image processing since 1982.
First employment as a research fellow for Prof. Rembold, Karlsruhe, Germany.
1984 formation of Engel und Stiefvater GmbH together with Dipl.-Ing. Hans Stiefvater. The company is pioneering machine vision in Germany.
1992-1994 Engel sells the company . The new name is Rheinmetall Machine Vision (RMV).
1996 Formation of Vision Components® GmbH
Michael Engel is known as the inventor of the Smart Camera. He holds a number of patents and plays the piano in his free time.
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