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GenICam standard group elects Chairs

The GenICam standard working group has elected its Chairs for the upcoming two-year term. During the International Vision Standards Meeting – Fall ’25 in Haikou, China, Michael Schmidt (Basler) was re-elected as Chair. Also the long-serving Vice-chair Christoph Zierl (MvTec) was re-elected, along with the two additional Vice-chairs James Falconer (Pleora Technologies) and Marcel Naggatz (Baumer Optronic). The election guarantees continuity and provides the option of a smooth handover in the event of future changes in Chairship. It is pending approval of the EMVA board representing the hosting association EMVA.

 

Caption: Group photo of the new GenICam Chairs team. Left to right: James Falconer Michael Schmidt, Marcel Naggatz, Christoph Zierl.

October meeting of TC42 WG28 (former EMVA 1288)

The latest meeting of the ISO working group TC42 WG28 took place on October 14th at Apple in Cupertino, California. During the meeting the current standard draft was revised and commented on. The following things were discussed:

  • The document still needs to be reviewed for ISO terminology
  • The scope of the current document is inconsistent with the scope in form 4 (document N6). The scope of form 4 should be used. Especially mentioning the machine vision application in the scope is important.
  • Exporting the document in word format seems to lead to strange looking formulae and the group hopes that ISO fixes that in the final publication.

After the discussion the draft was transferred to a working draft study (Stage 20.20) and was open for comments until November 3rd.  Addressing the comments is now possible until end of 2025. A second commenting period will last from beginning of January until end of January. Addressing these comments will then be possible until the next meeting of the group which is scheduled at CIPA in Tokyo February 24th to 27th with WG28 most likely meeting in the afternoon of Feb. 24th Tokyo time. The meeting thereafter will be in Boulder, Colorado USA, June 1st to 4th, 2026.

Interview with Dietmar Wüller | Image Engineering

Standardization is the key to the success of machine vision technology. Machine vision standards are commonly developed in the standard working groups and here by dedicated individuals. The EMVA interview series ‘Faces of Machine Vision Standards‘ introduces engineers having joined a standard working group and talk about their motivation to contribute and which experience they take out for their daily work.

EMVA with the CEO emeritus of Image Engineering, Dietmar Wüller, who as convenor is leading the newly formed ISO working group ISO 24942 in which the formerly EMVA-hosted standard EMVA 1288 was converted and is now further developed:

 

What is your background in machine vision standardization?

In the early 1990s, I pursued my studies in photographic technology at the University of Applied Sciences in Cologne, a period that coincided with the emergence of digital imaging. In 1997, I established Image Engineering and developed the first camera test stand. To avoid reinventing the wheel, I joined the ISO committee and built the test stand using standards that were under development at the time. In 2007, as the production of test equipment had become a significant part of Image Engineering’s business operations, I became involved with EMVA 1288, primarily as an observer. At that time, the majority of machine vision camera manufacturers either developed their own test equipment or procured it from the two existing companies that offered solutions in this area. Other imaging applications generally did not provide access to the linear raw data. For this reason, my company did not create its own test solution. With the release of version 4.0, there was a notable increase in interest, particularly among automotive applications that began exploring EMVA 1288.

How is standards work at ISO different from EMVA 1288?

The development within the EMVA-hosted working group was technology-driven. The processes were straightforward, and experts contributed according to their areas of expertise. The release of a new version was contingent upon the approval of the relevant experts. By contrast, developing a standard within an international standards organization such as ISO is a significantly more formal process. The initiation of the project is contingent upon the affirmative response from a designated number of countries that also have to nominate experts. Following the initiation of the project, the development process is characterized by its technical complexity and is managed by the specialists. Once the technical work is complete, the document will undergo a series of review phases. During these phases, the document will be voted on by the participating countries, which will also provide comments on the text. Each country is allotted one vote, irrespective of its size or the number of experts it deploys.

What is your role as convenor in the working group that manages ISO 24942?

The role of the convenor of a working group entails several key responsibilities. These include the coordination of activities, the management of meetings, and the assurance of adherence to formal development aspects. In the current working group, the ISO 24942 project is the sole active initiative. I serve in a dual capacity, assuming the role of both convenor and project leader for the ISO 24942 project. My responsibilities as project leader include coordinating the technical work and leading the editing of the document. I also address comments from experts and later from countries, among other tasks.

What potential do you see for the former EMVA 1288 standard under ISO?

While I don’t anticipate significant technical advancements in the near future, the document will likely gain global recognition. Most countries comply with international standards rather than creating their own, as doing so is the norm in the global business community. This will help to prevent the generation of competing standards in other countries, although it should be noted that this approach does not completely eliminate the risk of such occurrences.

Results of ISO-TC42-WG28 meeting in Berlin

The ISO working group TC42-WG28 (formerly EMVA 1288) met on June 26th in Berlin.

Main topic for the 31 in person as well as virtual attendees was the transfer of the EMVA 1288 text to the ISO online standards development (OSD) platform. In a next step, the document will be opened for comments by all experts until the next meeting, whereas the working group experts are asked to specifically comment on the text where the original document does not follow ISO directives.
The working group aims to get the standards document to a publication quickly while changes and additions would then be made in a future revision.

In addition, during the meeting Prof. Dr. Bernd Jähne (Chair of the EMVA1288 working group hosted by the EMVA) presented an example report for a camera and described the different elements that are measured according to the upcoming standard.

The next meeting is scheduled to take place at Apple in Cupertino in the morning of October 14th Pacific Time.

Interview with Simon Wölzmüller | Stemmer Imaging

Standardization is the key to the success of machine vision technology. Machine vision standards are commonly developed in the standard working groups and here by dedicated individuals. The EMVA interview series ‘Faces of Machine Vision Standards‘ introduces engineers having joined a standard working group and talk about their motivation to contribute and which experience they take out for their daily work.

EMVA recently spoke with GenICam working group member Simon Wölzmüller, Deputy Team Manager Software Development & Research at STEMMER IMAGING AG:

 

Why do you participate in the GenICam WG?

As a comparably inexperienced developer in our company, I started learning from very active members of the standards working group six years ago. The deeper I understood our in-house machine vision SDK (Common Vision Blox), its architecture and its interaction with manufacturers’ hardware; the more I realized the importance and the benefit of standardized interfaces and communication protocols. Naturally, the expectations and circumstances in software development especially in the machine vision industry are changing rapidly, which makes continuous development and maintenance of such profound standards even more important. The necessary contribution in the technical sense, but also the lively exchange and the discussions at regular meetings represent a great opportunity for improvements, but also a meaningful enrichment of my personal working life.

Which GenICam parts do you intend to shape with your input?

As my daily work has focused on the development of standards-compliant generic data acquisition software and with that deeper knowledge about GenTL, GenDC and GenAPI became necessary, I could very well imagine contributing to the future shaping of these components – always with an eye on the specifications of GEV and U3V. I also started to work on the feasibility analysis and the transformation of the build and deployment infrastructure, as well as on the modernization of the internal communication and collaboration tools.

How does your company benefit from your WG participation?

STEMMER IMAGING obviously benefits from the popularity and proliferation of the GenICam standard within the hardware and software landscape of the machine vision industry. Also, the commitment of sending contributing developers to the committees and working groups generates important expertise and experience that enriches in-house development. The community is a great point of exchange of knowledge and there is – without exception – no question that is left unanswered.

What was your biggest light bulb moment in the GenICam collaboration?

Even though I don’t have a long history of participation, I found the need for face-to-face meetings after the COVID pandemic even more than useful. In my opinion, the IVSM in Vienna 2023, for example, showed that the working group meetings are core to standardization; they accelerate and even improve standards development. Furthermore, the plugfest always surprises me with inspiring moments of ‘connectivity’. When I see that the standard working groups – albeit at a very mature stage – are still developing the standards and reference implementations, and are even continuously working on new topics, my image of them as a living entity in the business is strengthened.

Interview with Eric Bourbonnais | Teledyne DALSA

Standardization is the key to the success of machine vision technology. Machine vision standards are commonly developed in the standard working groups and here by dedicated individuals. The EMVA interview series ‘Faces of Machine Vision Standards‘ introduces engineers having joined a standard working group and talk about their motivation to contribute and which experience they take out for their daily work.

EMVA recently spoke with GenICam working group member Eric Bourbonnais, Technical Leader / 2D Mid-Market at Teledyne Vision Solutions:

 

Why do you participate in the GenICam WG?

I have been involved in the development of the GenICam standard since 2006. As a GigE Vision camera manufacturer, my company needed to learn more about this new standard, which was mandatory for GigE Vision. Participating in the GenICam working group gives me the opportunity to influence the GenICam standard in a way that benefits my company. It also allows me to collaborate with members from other companies, facilitating the exchange of ideas to find better solutions for the standard while simultaneously enhancing my own knowledge.
As time passed, it became clear that the development of this software standard would be crucial for machine vision standards. The GenICam modules are now referenced by most machine vision standards released today.
As the chair of the GigE Vision standard, it is even more important to participate in the development of GenICam due to the close relationship between the two standards.

Which GenICam parts do you intend to shape with your input?

The GenAPI and SFNC are the two main modules to which I have contributed the most in the past. Recently, I have been focusing on developing the device validation suite, which can be integrated into the certification process of machine vision standards that use normative references to the GenICam standard. The first version should be available later in 2024.

How does your company benefit from your WG participation?

My company is developing multiple products that use GenICam modules. Having someone with in-depth knowledge, the ability to influence the standard, and the capability to implement changes has been incredibly beneficial.

What was your biggest light bulb moment in the GenICam collaboration?

I don’t have a single “light bulb” moment that stands out; rather, my experience is marked by a long history of great collaboration. Over the years, working closely with industry experts and fellow members of the GenICam working group has led to numerous incremental improvements and innovations. This ongoing teamwork has been essential in refining the GenICam standard and ensuring it meets the evolving needs of the machine vision industry. Each collaborative effort has contributed to a collective success that benefits everyone involved.

Interview with Stefan Battmer | Balluff

Standardization is the key to the success of machine vision technology. Machine vision standards are commonly developed in the standard working groups and here by dedicated individuals. The EMVA interview series ‘Faces of Machine Vision Standards‘ introduces engineers having joined a standard working group and talk about their motivation to contribute and which experience they take out for their daily work.

EMVA recently spoke with GenICam working group member Stefan Battmer, Product Owner – Machine Vision APIs and Drivers at Balluff:

 

Why do you participate in the GenICam WG?

For me as a software developer by heart exchanging design ideas with a group of experts from all over the world was kind of a dream coming true. What could result in a better solution than something that has been approved by an international group of people facing similar or even the same challenges than yourself? As a result, to me it comes as no surprise, that GenICam and the various documents and standards that come with it have proven to be invaluable for both customers as well as device and software vendors since it greatly reduces integration and development time for all parties and allows to solve almost every problem today’s machine vision applications are facing.

Which GenICam parts do you intend to shape with your input?

Balluff (formerly MATRIX VISION) has been part of the GenICam working group since 2007. I joined the GenApi release team when GenApi became available on Linux based ARM platforms more than 10 years ago and since then I am a permanent member of the GenApi release team, providing the official ARM binaries to the community. Apart from that we also maintain the GenICam PFNC (Pixel Format Naming Convention) document. This work includes processing requests for new pixel formats, organizing discussions and votes on proposed changes. Right now, we focus on one of the more recent initiatives within the GenICam community which aims to specify a C-API specification that is supposed to overcome certain limitations of GenApi. Once resolved, this will allow to make even better use of the GenICam standard for technologies and platforms especially when dealing with systems having very limited resources.

How does your company benefit from your WG participation?

Meeting experts from the machine vision industry from all over the world and learning from them has proven to be a huge inspiration for my own work and the way we as a company approach today’s market demand. Before GenICam, for us as a machine vision camera supplier usually the integration of our devices into a third-party software package meant to develop some kind of adapter library/package. Nowadays with all the standards like GenICam and GenTL third party software usually almost instantly can use the full potential of our devices without the need for such a specific adapter, significantly reducing maintenance effort and the need for specific domain knowledge. Our customers also directly benefit from that since the robustness and overall user experience of these interfaces is excellent and comparing hardware between different vendors became a lot easier.

What was your biggest light bulb moment in the GenICam collaboration?

It’s hard to pinpoint the light bulb moment. In fact, there have been several such moments at every meeting I can remember. Plugfests for example are almost guaranteed to provide you with an eye opener on how to improve your product. Apart from that I see the face-to-face meetings as being crucial for the success of the standard, since a lot of important ideas came out of coffee breaks or over dinner when experts stuck their heads together.

Interview with Silvan Murer | Heliotis

Standardization is the key to the success of machine vision technology. Machine vision standards are commonly developed in the standard working groups and here by dedicated individuals. The EMVA interview series ‘Faces of Machine Vision Standards‘ introduces engineers having joined a standard working group and talk about their motivation to contribute and which experience they take out for their daily work.

EMVA recently spoke with GenICam working group member Silvan Murer, Embedded Systems Architect at Heliotis AG:

 

Why do you participate in the GenICam WG?

Beginning with the development of our new camera platform for 3D measurement systems in year 2017, I was responsible for its software interface.
During this time, I got to know GenICam. Cameras with the standardized interface (GenICam) are usable out of the box in many common machine visions applications. Thanks to standardization, no additional device-specific information, like API documentation, is required and our customers can use our cameras directly in their usual environment. This reduces their development cost and our support efforts at the same time.
Motivated by these facts, I delved into the topic and started to implement our new camera interface based on GenICam. At the beginning of our membership, we used the existing standard. While working with it, we noticed that a few tweaks would improve the definition. So, I got more actively involved in the standardization.

Which GenICam parts do you intend to shape with your input?

In the GenICam WG, each member can work on the topics they are most experienced with and where their contribution benefits the company they work for. In my case, it’s basically the transport layer interface and the cameras configuration interface.
As we develop 3D cameras, our participation in the standardization for submission of 3D information is relevant.

How does your company benefit from your WG participation?

We took a huge benefit from the WG back during the development of our new camera interface. The discussions within the WG clearly improved our interface quality. That’s still true today, as we benefit from the plug fests to test our camera with different software vendors. Furthermore, the interaction with the software vendor’s engineers helps improving the interoperability between our 3D camera and various machine vision software.
As I said, we thus benefit from fewer support requests and our customers enjoy a quick and high-quality integration of our camera. This means they can focus on their core machine vision developments after a very short time.

What was your biggest light bulb moment in the GenICam collaboration?

For me it’s crazy that so many different cultures and companies around the world can work together on the standardization. Regardless of whether you are a competitor or a business partner, everyone works together. No matter how big the company is, every opinion is valued equally.
This also creates friendship and I’m looking forward to seeing my colleagues at the next IVSM.

Interview with Tim Bruylants | intoPIX

Standardization is the key to the success of machine vision technology. Machine vision standards are commonly developed in the standard working groups and here by dedicated individuals. The EMVA interview series ‘Faces of Machine Vision Standards‘ introduces engineers having joined a standard working group and talk about their motivation to contribute and which experience they take out for their daily work.

EMVA recently spoke with GenICam working group member Tim Bruylants, Image Coding and Standardization Expert at intoPIX:

 

Why do you participate in the GenICam WG?

intoPIX is an image and video compression technology company that provided a major part of the technology behind JPEG XS, an open ISO mezzanine video compression standard. It allows to overcome bandwidth and power budget restrictions without impacting latency and quality in applications that otherwise rely on uncompressed video data. JPEG XS furthermore supports direct compression of raw Bayer CFA image data, avoiding any debayering before compression, making it a completely transparent codec. This makes it particularly useful in image sensor, machine vision and automotive applications. Given that GenICam’s GenDC specification is used by other standards, such as GigE Vision, USB3 Vision or CoaXPress, we decided that supporting and promoting JPEG XS in GenICam would be beneficial for everyone.

Which GenICam parts do you intend to shape with your input?

The support of direct raw Bayer CFA compression, along with the line-based latency, low complexity, and high quality, makes JPEG XS particularly interesting as compression technology for EMVA-related applications. For this reason, intoPIX teamed up with other EMVA members to propose adding JPEG XS support in GenICam (GenDC in particular).

How does your company benefit from your WG participation?

Getting JPEG XS support in important standards, like EMVA’s GenICam, significantly helps adoption in both ways. JPEG XS gets more visibility and can be deployed in many more ecosystems, while GenICam and standards that rely on GenICam’s GenDC specification (GigE Vision and USB3 Vision) can benefit from the unique features of JPEG XS to solve real-world application challenges.

What was your biggest light bulb moment in the GenICam collaboration?

Initially, we prepared for multiple proposals to add JPEG XS support in many different specifications (GenICam, GigE Vision and USB3 Vision), expecting it to be a lot of work. However, with the help of Adimec (a partner of intoPIX and EMVA member), we quickly learned that adding support to just GenDC was all that is needed. This clearly shows the skill and expertise of the group to make stable and well-designed specifications.

Interview with Roman Moie | MVTec Software GmbH

Standardization is the key to the success of machine vision technology. Machine vision standards are commonly developed in the standard working groups and here by dedicated individuals. The EMVA interview series ‘Faces of Machine Vision Standards‘ introduces engineers having joined a standard working group and talk about their motivation to contribute and which experience they take out for their daily work.

EMVA recently spoke with GenICam working group member Roman Moie, Product Owner Interfaces at MVTec Software GmbH:

 

Why do you participate in the GenICam WG?

When working on software, there is a permanent danger of getting too comfortable in the developer bubble and losing the contact to the outside world. Our products can however only succeed if we continuously gather and consider all kinds of suggestions from our customers and partners. So, I was very lucky to get the opportunity to represent MVTec at the vision standards and network with many other companies there. Working with the GenICam WG means working with some of the greatest experts of the whole machine vision industry. Besides the high quality standards that result from our work, we all continuously learn from the exchange of ideas and fruitful discussions. Collaboration rather than pure competition also reflects my personal values.

Which GenICam parts do you intend to shape with your input?

MVTec has been part of the GenApi release team ever since the beginning. This means that we work with the other release team members to get all the code changes ready and generate the release package. Later, MVTec donated the so called GenTL Producer Framework to the GenICam WG which provides a powerful starting point for the development of new GenTL Producers. This framework has become an official module of the GenICam standard and as its maintainer, I collect and prioritize change requests and propose releases when there is enough progress made. In a recent initiative, we have been working with a subgroup of interested companies to overcome the limitations of the GenApi. This initiative aims at making GenICam attractive for a wider range of technologies and reducing complexity of both implementation and usage.

How does your company benefit from your WG participation?

MVTec is a leading international manufacturer of software for machine vision. One of our big selling points is easy-to-use interoperability with a wide range of hardware components. If you imagine the machine vision market as x camera manufacturers and y software manufacturers, interoperability in a world without standards requires a lot of effort. Each software manufacturer needs to develop x pieces of code to interface with each camera manufacturer Software Development Kit (SDK), making a total of x times y interfaces to be developed to enable all combinations. By introducing a standard that all companies in the market adhere to, each manufacturer needs to interface with only one standard anymore and the total number of interfaces reduces to x plus y. During my years at MVTec, I have seen this effect happen very practically and I have also seen that the saved efforts are reinvested in a better software quality and user experience for our common customers.

What was your biggest light bulb moment in the GenICam collaboration?

When the semiannual International Vision Standards Meeting was suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic, I noticed how helpful it had been for my daily work to talk to the other experts. This kind of exchange happens throughout the meeting weeks whenever there is a little spare time in between. Thanks to virtual meetings, the work on the standards continued but all those informal offline conversations were missing a lot. That’s why I’m happy that we can now meet in person again.