Intelligent transport systems and production automation will both be highlighted as key topics at the Vision trade fair when it takes place 4-6 November in Stuttgart, Germany.
Traffic monitoring, traffic management, traffic safety and transport will be shown under the theme ‘Traffic Vision’, while numerous events geared towards end users of production automation will be featured as part of ‘Vision 4 Automation’.
The show returns in November after a year’s hiatus since switching to a biennial cycle last year.
The Vision 4 Automation theme will look more closely at the connection between machine vision and automation. ‘More and more processes are being automated and networked. This means that automation is becoming more detailed and more complex,’ said Thomas Nepstad, product marketing manager for vision at Cognex, in a statement.
So complex in fact that the Association of German Engineers, the VDI, along with VDMA Machine Vision, are developing standard specification sheets designed to aid end users and machine vision suppliers when integrating vision in production equipment.
At the show, various automation activities will take place, including an automation tour, the joint stand IPC 4 Vision, a special topic block ‘machine vision for automation’ under the umbrella of the Industrial Vision Days, advanced training courses within the framework of the Vision Academy, the Integration Area, and the standards area set up by the European Machine Vision Association.
There will also be a traffic tour at Vision involving 20 exhibitors, as well as a podium discussion and a series of talks examining the topic of ‘machine vision for the traffic industry’ at the Industrial Vision Days.
The transport sector has been earmarked as a growth area for machine vision, where highways authorities are looking to collect vast amounts of data on road usage for aspects like traffic management and safety.
For example in Bydgoszcz in Poland, Siemens has received an order worth €500,000 to install 50 video cameras for automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) across the road network of the city. Siemens won the order to supply an integrated traffic control system with more than 400 APNR cameras for the Polish cities of Poznañ and Bialystok.
The Sitraffic Sicore cameras will register more than half a million number plates every day. The video systems will serve both the early detection of traffic delays and also make the roads safer. Sitraffic Sicore can detect up to two lanes of traffic and can also register different directions at the same time. It has an operating range of around five to 35 metres. The integrated Siemens detection and reading technology achieves top detection rates at vehicle speeds up to 250km/h. Special algorithms also make it possible to distinguish different vehicle classes and to monitor dangerous goods transports.
At the show in Stuttgart, Basler is among the companies presenting cameras for the transport sector. The company will exhibit its Ace two-dimensional camera series and the BIP network cameras with integrated IMX174 image sensor from Sony. ‘Thanks to its [the IMX174 sensor] high sensitivity, the enormous dynamic range and its outstanding image quality, it will be a tough competitor for much more expensive CCD-based solutions,’ said Enzio Schneider, market manager ITS at Basler, in a statement.
Matrix Vision will also present solutions, as will the Safety and Security Department of the Austrian Institute of Technology, which will demonstrate a new tram safety system based on 3D stereo vision technology.
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