Messe Stuttgart picks up on new industry trends / Regular exhibitors are already planning their appearance in Stuttgart
Small yet fine, progressive and with high sales: that’s the machine vision industry. The sector is once again on course for further growth according to the latest study by the VDMA IBV. All the market leaders will meet up at VISION, the leading world trade fair for machine vision, from 8 to 10 November.
“Many exhibitors synchronise their product developments with VISION. That is why we are already looking forward to seeing their product innovations at the 2016 event,” explains Florian Niethammer, VISION Team Leader. The event manager expects to see more than 400 exhibitors once again this year. One of them, Silicon Software, has been exhibiting since the exhibition was founded in 1997. “VISION, the leading world trade fair, is the most important event for us,” explains Michael Noffz, Marketing Manager with Silicon Software. The trade fair organising team has a really good feel for new issues and thus makes VISION a platform where you can win new customers, as well as a place where the industry can meet up, exchange ideas and create new partnerships and joint projects.” VISION is also compulsory for Stemmer Imaging. “We have been at each event since the very outset,” states Peter Stiefenhöfer, Head of Marketing and Public Relations at Stemmer Imaging, and then continues “After all, VISION is the most important global trade fair for the machine vision sector.”
“Embedded Vision” – the number 1 hot topic
One of the issues that will play a key role at VISION 2016 is “Embedded Vision” – the industry experts are convinced of this. “There is so much going on with this topic at the moment,” explains Florian Niethammer. “Machines that don’t just see but also understand their environment. Products that previously were only being tested in research centres are increasingly starting to penetrate the market,” continues Michael Noffz: “Embedded Vision in industrial and non-industrial applications and Automation 4.0 are two issues that are expected to occupy the industry in the medium term, probably for the next 5 years.” According to Peter Stiefenhöfer from Stemmer Imaging, all the latest technological advances have one specific thing in common: “Machine vision is becoming ever faster, the camera resolutions are becoming better and the interfaces increasingly powerful. We are also very clearly observing that machine vision is becoming more user-friendly – the commissioning or adaptation of systems can be increasingly done by users with minimal experience.”
Michael Noffz is particularly looking forward to the general topic of Industry 4.0 at the trade fair in the autumn: “This enables VISION to appeal mores strongly to the sector’s system providers.” Silicon Software will be focussing on presenting its proven Visual Applets programming tool in 2016, which introduces the topic of hardware-based machine vision to software engineers and is currently called for especially in small systems, such as embedded applications, which require a powerful application. Stemmer Imaging will be attracting visitors by showcasing its joint project with Perception Park, a specialist in hyperspectral imaging. “Our hyperspectral system is based on Perception Park’s software and enables a distinction to be made between objects on the basis of their material properties. The presentation of this technology will be one of our highlights at VISION.”
Market leaders from all over the world
Registrations for VISION 2016 are once again showing a trend that has been evident in previous years. Over half of all exhibitors come from abroad. “The share of international exhibitors currently lies at 53%. Three-quarters come from Europe, with the remainder from the USA, Canada and Asia. We are witnessing very strong growth especially from China. Apart from two joint stands for the Chinese CMVU association, there are also a large number of individual stands for Chinese manufacturers,” explains Florian Niethammer.
Over 400 exhibitors are expected to attend VISION 2016. 275 companies have already registered, including many market leaders: Allied Vision, Basler, Baumer, Cognex, Edmund Optics, IDS, Keyence, MVTec, Opto Engineering, ProPhotonix, Sensopart Sick, Silicon Software and Stemmer Imaging. Exhibiting for the first time at VISION: Bosch Healthcare and ifm electronic.
