Matija Kopić and François Simoens will be presenting at EMVA Virtual Business Conference 2020

Be prepared for an exciting programme of the first EMVA Virtual Business Conference, June 26th, 2020. Presentations from leaders and innovators in our industry will present relevant topics such as 3D Vision, Autonomous Navigation, Deep Learning, Photonics and more.

EMVA is pleased to present two top speakers who will address

‘Vision-based Autonomous Navigation’ and ‘Photonics & Machine Vision’

‘Vision-based Autonomous Navigation’

Matija Kopić built his first startup, Farmeron, in 2012, and the company grew into one of the most known startups in Croatia.

In 2017, he co-founded the robotics and AI company Gideon Brothers, one of the global pioneers developing autonomy technology for industrial environments based on 3D visual perception.

Abstract of Matija Kopic´s presentation:

The presentation will focus on the fundamental components of an AI-based 3D Visual Autonomy for mobile robots, while also addressing the benefits of such technology in the more automated economy of the future.

Recent advances in Perception Sensors, Computer Vision, ML, Edge and Cloud Computing are rapidly propelling mobile robots to new levels of productivity, reliability, and safety. COVID-19 has exacerbated these trends, accelerating the need for mobile robots to help humans.

‘Photonics & Machine Vision’

François Simoens carried out seven years of research in the accelerator field at CEA Saclay, before joining CEA-Leti in Grenoble in 2003 with the position of program manager and expert in infrared and THz sensors.

From 2015 to 2018, Francois has been the Marketing and Strategy Manager for the imaging technologies and systems developed at Leti from X-ray to Far-Infrared. Since 2019 he acts as the Director of the LETI strategic program named ‘miniaturized LIDAR – CPS’.….

Don’t miss the outstanding opportunity to join the 18th edition of EMVA’s Business Conference and click the below for all details.

* Income from registration fees will be donated to the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund, led by the WHO

Agenda / Speaker / Registration

Jürgen Beyerer and Bruno Maisonnier will be presenting at EMVA Virtual Business Conference 2020

Be prepared for an exciting programme of the first EMVA Virtual Business Conference, June 26th, 2020. Presentations from leaders and innovators in our industry will present relevant topics such as 3D Vision, Autonomous Navigation, Deep Learning, Photonics and more.

EMVA is pleased to present two top speakers who will address

‘Artificial Intelligence’ in the context of Qualty Control and Inspection.

‘Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence for Automated Visual Inspection’

Dr. Ing. Jürgen Beyerer is a full professor for informatics at the Institute for Anthropomatics and Robotics at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) since March 2004 and director of the Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation (IOSB) in Ettlingen, Karlsruhe, Ilmenau, Lemgo, and Görlitz. He is Spokesman of the Fraunhofer Group for Defense and Security VVS and he is member of acatech, National Academy of Science and Engineering. Furthermore, he is Head of team 7 of the platform „Lernende Systeme“ and Spokesman of the Competence Center Robotic Systems for Decontamination in Hazardous Environments (ROBDEKON).

Research interests include automated visual inspection, signal and image processing, pattern recognition, metrology, information theory, machine learning, security, system theory, autonomous systems and automation.

Abstract of Jürgen Beyerer´s presentation:

In his presentation Jürgen Beyerer will address, how ML approaches can be used in Automated Visual Inspection (AVI). Questions that will be discussed are inter alia: What are the potentials of ML-methods in AVI? How can sufficiently enough data be amassed necessary for deep learning? How can data be augmented synthetically? How can prior knowledge be exploited in order to cope with little data? How can AI-approaches help to design complex AVI-systems?

‘Artificial Intelligence Learning at the Edge — Application to Integration-Free Quality Control’

French serial entrepreneur and innovator, Bruno Maisonnier is founder and CEO of AnotherBrain, world category leader in 3rd generation AI, and the Founder & ex-CEO of Aldebaran Robotics.

Passionate about technology and the way it can improve people’s everyday lives, in 2017, Bruno founded AnotherBrain, startup which brings Organic AITM, a new generation of artificial intelligence which is bio-inspired, explainable and self-learning. In 2005, Bruno developed from scratch Aldebaran Robotics, which became the world leader in humanoid robotics. Sold to a Japanese giant in 2015, the company became SoftBank Robotics.

Abstract of Bruno Maisonnier´s presentation:

Today the mainstream of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is based on fully supervised deep neural networks. Mainly used on classification tasks, they brought a major disruption in terms of performance with respect to traditional rules-based computer vision solutions. Nevertheless, because of the complexity of data gathering and supervision, they still require specialists, i.e. data scientists to train the solution offline and only inference is applied on the edge. As a result, most of current AI solutions fail to deliver the promise of artificial intelligence, i.e. a system that is able to be trained and operated directly by the end user. While this may still be a good answer to issues involving generic data like cars or pedestrians for which huge datasets exist on the cloud, AnotherBrain believes that applications where data is very scarce and specific to the customer require a new approach, a third generation of Artificial Intelligence.

This talk is dedicated to the review of this solution and its technical contributions to the field of automatic quality control.

Don’t miss the outstanding opportunity to join the 18th edition of EMVA’s Business Conference and click the below for all details.

* Income from registration fees will be donated to the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund, led by the WHO

Agenda / Speaker / Registration

The European Commission is opening a call to contribute to the fight against Covid19.

In this webinar John Magan, Deputy Head of the Photonics Unit at the European Commission, outlines the content of the call and will answer your questions on this. The webinar will take place on May 15th, 12pm. Register here: https://www.photonics21.org/events-workshops/2020/05/2020_05_Webinar_EC_Covid_call.php

Photonics21 aims to establish Europe as a leader in the development and deployment of photonics technologies within the various applications fields such as ICT, lighting, industrial manufacturing, life science, safety as well as in education and training. EMVA is pleased that Dr.-Ing. Dirk Berndt has been elected to the Board of Stakeholders (BoS) of Photonics21 in his function as member of the EMVA board of directors. The Board of Stakeholders is the main decision-making body of the European Technology Platform (ETP) Photonics21.

EMVA President Chris Yates discussed the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the machine vision industry in a live panel webinar on April 15 hosted by IMVEurope together with Jeff Burstein, Allan Anderson, and Anne Wendel, from the AIA, UKIVA, and VDMA associations.

In his opening statement Chris strongly acknowledged the contribution and efforts made by front line staff to the people directly and indirectly affected by this pandemic.

With regards to industrial production he highlighted the ability for manufacturing supply chains to more rapidly reorganize to provide necessary goods to address the crisis; thanks to the flexibility in automation as one of the promises of Industry 4.0. Looking at the vision industry the panelists stressed the positive role of vision technology in fighting the pandemic, be it in automated lab systems for example in vaccine processing and testing; in thermal imaging to control the body temperature in highly frequented places; or in the multiple camera based inspection systems of pharmaceuticals and medical goods.

Chris noted: “Several initiatives have been started with the goal to leverage recent developments in AI/deep learning to rapidly make a classification of CT scans of patient chest and lung areas; amongst them the European Imaging COVID-19 AI Initiative.”

Quite a few EMVA members reported that demand remains strong and projects are continuing for the time being. Nevertheless, Chris said out that the Corona epidemic will without doubt have negative business impacts on the wider economy. While clear picture of the impact is not yet to be seen, Chris Yates pointed towards two major areas to have in focus during the crisis. One is liquidity:

“Certainly impacts will be different across companies since the vision industry serves many different customer sectors, hence a reasonable entrepreneurial decision would be to set a focus on conserving cash as a rational response to uncertainty.”

The second area Chris highlighted is to have a close look at the supply chain.

“Machine vision has the advantage to normally order in relatively low to medium volumes. However, bearing in mind that one large unknown still is the lockdown period one has to keep good contact to the suppliers and, if the liquidity allows maybe raise stock to buffer future shortages.”

Chris also joined in with the other panelists in highlighting the importance to retain the workforce as long as possible in order to be able to serve rising demand quickly after the crisis.

Chris outlined the overall goals for the EMVA as an association during this period to support the EMVA members and the wider vision community in whichever way possible during the crisis; and that the vision industry is well placed to emerge strongly and able to quickly support the needs of wider markets. Immediate reactions of the EMVA include the transformation of the EMVA Business Conference to be held online in virtual form on 26 June; but also online training seminars and exams to acquire the EMVA1288 standard certification. In addition, the EMVA will release a series of videos of previous conferences and events so that can catch up on recent events and insights in quiet spells – particularly the second embedded vision Europe conference held last November.

“Most importantly, we will highly intensify our direct contact to the members in order to directly understand their needs and start with market research activities in order to grasp the dimension of the Corona crisis for the vision community”, said Chris Yates.

In his closing remark the EMVA President said:

“Overall I see that on the macro scale the proposition of automation in general and vision sensing for automation is undiminished. Whilst the effects of the crisis will certainly affect us all, our businesses, and attitudes, the fundamental drivers of the industry remain, and in many cases are strengthened.”

Wednesday 15 April 2020 @ 3pm (UK), 4pm (Europe), 10am (ET)

Imaging and Machine Vision Europe will host a live panel discussion featuring leading figures from industry bodies around the world to discuss vision’s response to the Covid 19 crisis.

Chris Yates, President EMVA, will be one of the invited speakers. Live panel webinar registration:

https://event.webcasts.com/starthere.jsp?ei=1300110&tp_key=3ca077a71d&sti=imvenewsletter

We all are well aware that the global coronavirus pandemic is affecting our private and business life in such a significant way most of us never experienced before. Our thoughts remain with those who are ill and those working at the forefront of efforts to contain the pandemic.

Earlier in the year preparations for a successful 18th edition of EMVA’s annual Business Conference, 25 – 27 June 2020 in Sofia, Bulgaria, were well advanced, the conference program almost completed and with more than 60 registrants already end of February, we were again looking forward to a successful and enjoyable event.

Obviously the EMVA event team has been in contact with local authorities and monitored closely the international situation for the last weeks. Now, based on the high dynamics of the pandemic development it will come as no surprise that we must formally cancel the EMVA Business Conference 2020 in Sofia.

Already registered attendees as well as conference sponsors will be contacted directly with regards to refunding their payments. It is our intention to simply delay the Business Conference by one year and visit Sofia in 2021.

18th EMVA Business Conference in Online Format

The EMVA Conference, besides relevant technical and market driven presentations, is characterized by meeting the peers in a pleasant setup. Personal conversations, exchanging ideas, laughing and enjoying the valuable time together is what makes this event a true annual highlight.

Therefore, whoever joined an EMVA Business Conference in one of Europe’s main capitals the last 17 years would be able to confirm that this special mood cannot simply be shifted to or even be substituted by an online event format.

Nevertheless, and especially as nearly all opportunities for technology exchange and to meet are taken away in these times, the EMVA is working on setting up the 18th Business Conference with a reduced programme in an online format to take place at Friday, June 26th, 2020.

The online conference event will provide technical insights by presentations and networking opportunities through pre-scheduled virtual face-to-face meetings during the breaks.

Further details may be found soon at www.business-conference-emva.org and/or www.emva.org, and we will of course keep you informed with regular updates to our mailing list.

19th EMVA Business Conference 2021 – SAVE THE DATE

EMVA Board of Directors, management and the whole team is looking forward to meeting you at the 19th EMVA Business Conference taking place 10 – 12 June 2021, in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Don’t miss the opportunity to join one of the highlight vision events in 2021 and save the date right now!

Stay well, stay safe, and best regards,

Thomas Lübkemeier

EMVA General Secretary

Due to the cancellation of Control today, the planned Control Vision Talks lecture forum will not be held this year. We are very sorry about this, but we fully understand the necessity of cancelling the fair due to the circumstances caused by the COVID-19 (coronavirus) .

As the next Control will not take place until May 4 to 7, 2021, we will send out a new Call for Papers for Control Vision Talks 2021 at the end of this year.

Share your expertise on the focal topic:

Accuracy, Reliability and Limits of Machine Vision

You are invited to submit your valuable contribution to this focal topic. Submit your extended abstract for a contributed talk or poster no later than May 8, 2020, via our Submission Tool.

All submissions are openly reviewed by the joint Scientific and Industrial Advisory Board of the forum and everyone, who has submitted a contribution.

For more Information, please visit “5^th European Machine Vision Forum – Call for Contributions” or sign in for submission of your contribution at https://submission.emva-forum.org/

IMPORTANT: Cancellation of the Control Vision Talks Lecture Forum

Due to the cancellation of Control today (March 17, 2020), the planned Control Vision Talks lecture forum will not be held this year. We are very sorry about this, but we fully understand the necessity of cancelling the fair due to the circumstances caused by the COVID-19 (coronavirus). As the next Control will not take place until May 4 to 7, 2021, we will send out a new Call for Papers for Control Vision Talks 2021 at the end of this year.

At this year’s CONTROL, you will have the opportunity to be certified as an EMVA 1288 expert within 90 minutes. Using the form below, you can easily register for EMVA 1288 certification at “User Level” or “Expert Level”.

EMVA 1288 Certification at CONTROL 2020

Date: May 7, 2020  – 10:30 a.m.

Place: CONTROL, Hall 8, Meeting Room 8.2

Particiption fee:   200,- Euros for EMVA member entities / 250,- Euros for non-members

What know-how should you ideally have for participation:

You can easily learn the necessary background knowledge for the 90-minute “User Level” exam by watching the video tutorials on the “EMVA 1288” standard. If you want to obtain the “Expert Level” certification, you should already have some experience with EMVA 1288 measurements and the necessary basic theoretical knowledge.

And here cou can register right away: Registration EMVA 1288 Certification at CONTROL 2020