How Did Photoneo Adapt During The Pandemic?

To find out how the industry changed during the pandemic, MVPro Media’s Matt Williams spoke to several innovators in the world of machine vision. Stay tuned for the rest of our exclusive pandemic interviews. Also, to see the full list of our pandemic interviews, click here. 

In this interview, Andrea Pufflerova explains how Photoneo was affected by the pandemic. Andrea works as a PR Specialist at Photoneo.

MW: How did Photoneo adapt during Covid?   

AP: We needed to take all measures necessary to ensure that our operations would stay unaffected but also to maximise the safety of our team. During the first waves of Covid, the majority of our employees were working from home, except for departments such as R&D or production. 

It was our priority and also responsibility towards our customers to continue providing the same level of support they were used to before the pandemic, and also to keep standard, reliable, and stable delivery times despite the global disruption of supply chains and material shortage.  This was a challenging mission but we can say now proudly that we passed it with flying colours. 

MW: How much has Covid changed the way Photoneo is run? 

AP: We are getting back to our standard business operations. In May we hosted a global partner event for the whole ‘Photoneo family’, which was an amazing experience after more than two years of distant communication. We are happy that we can meet our customers and partners to discuss business in person again. 

MW: Did Covid give Photoneo the opportunity to reflect and research new ideas? 

AP: The pandemic restrictions and shortage of labour force caused an explosion of interest in automation across all sectors. This trend propelled our R&D activities and the exploration of new technologies and application areas. It put our focus on flexible solutions that can be adapted to new situations and environments. 

The past three years have been significant in the development of our company and further R&D activities. Last year, we launched the first and only fully automated solution for warehouses, dark stores, and grocers, which revolutionises fulfillment through our new business unit BRIGHTPICK. 

This year is marked by the release of our new colour 3D camera MotionCam-3D Color. The camera brings a game-changing combination of three key properties – 3D data, motion, and colour. The fusion of these elements in a single device is unique in the market and makes the camera the only device that enables real-time colourful 3D point cloud creation of moving scenes in high resolution and accuracy.

The camera is a significant advancement in machine vision as it opens up new possibilities for demanding AI applications. The data from the camera can provide a valuable asset to decision-making applications, including inspection, quality control, or recognition tasks. The camera also holds a huge potential for VR and AR, 3D model creation for the Metaverse and digital twins, or data streaming for distant teleoperation of industrial applications.  

This year, we also introduced our new tool Locator Studio for achieving extreme picking speed in collision-free environments. And of course, we’re continuously working on upgrades to our Bin Picking Studio tool for bin-picking applications. So, the pandemic has been a difficult time but it also provided invaluable inspiration for us that propelled our business growth and innovation. 

We at MVPro Media would like to thank X for taking part in this interview. Find out more about Photoneo.