As I sat down to write this welcome I did wonder where to start given that it has been an extraordinary year for us all. For an industry that is built on collegiality and networking, that excels at showcasing products at events at an international level, we’ve all had to rise to the challenge and adapt our business models to succeed in the new normal, one of the points discussed by Sebastien Dignard, iENSO President, later in this issue. The end is in sight, however, with the announcement of successful vaccines, so I very much hope that this time next year we will have met in person at scheduled events and until then here at MVPro we will continue to focus on the industry’s innovations, collaborations and successes.
As well as our usual topical insights into industry news, case studies and product launches, in this issue we talk to Vision Ventures Managing Partner Gabriele Jansen and Director Chris Yates on a busy year of mergers and acquisition in the vision sector and how they see a continued strategic need for vision in 2021.
We look at how a FLIR solution of thermal imaging, visible cameras and NVR has provided round the clock monitoring for a critically endangered blind South Western Black rhino. As the international market for machine vision systems is growing rapidly and standard software solutions play an important role, Mario Bohnacker, Technical Product Manager HALCON, MVTec Software GmbH, tells us about their latest release HALCON 20.11.
With medical technology uppermost in our minds Subh Bhattacharya, Lead on Healthcare, Medical Devices and Sciences at Xilinx discusses how AI is helping to detect pneumonia in chest X-Rays. And for all foosball players out there MEA and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology take us through the ultimate challenge between humans and robots, using high speed cameras to discover the winner.
We wish all of our friends and colleagues a happy and peaceful Christmas and look forward to working with you in 2021.
Alex Sullivan
Publishing Director
