It all depends what you mean by a vision system

Citation

(2003), "It all depends what you mean by a vision system", Sensor Review, Vol. 23 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/sr.2003.08723cab.001

It all depends what you mean by a vision system

It all depends what you mean by a vision system

Keywords: Machine vision, Standards

By a happy coincidence, Frost and Sullivan launched their report on "World Machine Vision Inspection Markets" in the same week in February that presented the preliminary results of Automated Imaging Association's report on World Machine Vision Markets were being presented at their annual Business Conference. While the Frost and Sullivan report indicates a world market size of $1.12 billion in 2002, the AIA report sets the North American market alone at $1.55 billion, and the European market is reported as $1.32 billion for the same period – AIA results for Japan and the Pacific Rim countries are not yet available. How can we account for this discrepancy?

The most obvious difference is in the scopes of the respective reports – the Frost and Sullivan report is specifically about inspection, while the AIA report also covers the generic applications of location and pattern recognition (identification). Both these latter tasks are much smaller than the inspection element, but in Europe they account for about 30 per cent of all revenues.

Another difference is the way the AIA report allows for "Added value" by system integrators and OEM users who buy "Vision engines" of various kinds and sell them with their value enhanced by software or application development. Eliminating this content the AIA figures become $1.24 billion for the North American Market and $1.05 billion in Europe. Taking 70 per cent (for inspection only) of these reduced figures, we still get $1.6 billion, more than the Frost and Sullivan "World" report total, even before we add anything for Japan and the Pacific Rim. There may also be a relatively minor discrepancy in the choice of exchange rates – the Frost and Sullivan report was probably compiled some time before the end of 2002, when the dollar was stronger than the Euro; the European part of the AIA report was actually completed with the Euro stronger than the dollar, though to reflect the year 2002, a parity rate was used in calculations.

Both reports exclude non-industrial applications, such as OCR used in banking, or automated traffic monitoring. The Frost and Sullivan report states that it specifically excludes lighting systems or mounting equipment, while the AIA report does not consider these in the totals if they are sold separately, if they are part of a system whose primary function is a vision application, the overall cost of the system will indeed be included. If we consider the case of an assembly robot which uses vision to guide it to the right place, neither report would include the cost of the robot – the "vision market end user" would be whoever bought the vision system to fit it to the robot. The buyer of the robot wants it for its assembly capability, and not for the sake of the vision system that helps it to perform this function. However, if we consider the case of a system to inspect printed circuit boards, the value reported by the AIA is likely to be several times higher than the equivalent F&S figure, because the mechanical handling requirements are substantial and the AIA will consider the system as a whole to be part of the "inspection" market.

Since the AIA reports are annual, and are compiled regularly from year to year, they are particularly useful in following trends. The North American market revenues declined by 15.4 per cent in 2002 on 2001, while the European revenues declined by only 1 per cent (though the Euro gained 16 per cent in the year, using the parity adopted for calculating exchange rates, the decline in constant dollars was substantially greater). Over 70 per cent of North American suppliers expected conditions to improve in 2003, and almost all responding European suppliers expected moderate improvements.

Details of the AIA report are available at: www.machinevisononline.org

The Frost and Sullivan report reference is A246-01 and the details are at: www.frost.com