Q+A CENTER

Software innovations also are on the rise. According to the latest VDMA survey of the machine vision industry, software sales increased by 30 percent in 2006 over the previous year. MVTec (Munich) will present Halcon 8.0, which has increased the speed of the software library by an average of 25 percent, but up to 500 percent for some individual operators.

Stemmer Imaging (Puchheim, Germany) has upgraded its Common Vision Blox 9.0.2 (CVB) software package, including a separately developed GigE Vision driver. In addition to a socket connection, this driver contains a filter driver that transmits camera data directly to the application.

Some other new products include a new line of cameras—the Stingray—from Allied Vision (Stadtroda, Germany), a new generation of inspection sensors from Cognex (Karlsruhe, Germany), a new 1.3-megapixel CMOS sensor with snapshot shutter capability from Cypress Semiconductor (Mechelen, Belgium), and a new InLine network-ready high-speed camera from Fastec Imaging (San Diego, Calif.).

Matrox Imaging (Dorval, Quebec, Canada) will reveal its Iris E-Series smart camera/software package, National Instruments (Austin, Texas) will release its new series of smart cameras, Photron (Marlow, Bucks, U.K.) will unveil its new Fastcam SA 1 with a speed up to 500,000fps, and its Fastcam MH 4, miniature, high-speed video system that allows the use of one to four detachable camera heads, and Moritex Europe (Wismar, Germany) will preview a suite of new products for machine vision and inspection applications.

The very important illumination aspect of machine vision won't be forgotten either.

iiM (Meiningen, Germany) will show its wide variety of LEDs in different designs and colors, including red, white, blue, green and infrared. Gardasoft Vision (Cambridge, U.K.) will show its new PP520 controller that includes ethernet control. It also has an internal web server so it can be configured from any networked PC using a web browser.