The VISION Award has long since become a tradition in the machine vision industry. The coveted “Machine Vision Oscar” was presented on 9 October 2024 during VISION 2024.
The Award worth 3,000 Euros was won by Toshiba Teli Corporation for its innovation “OneShotBRDF™ Technology: Revolutionizing Surface Flaw Detection on Glossy and Flat Materials”. This new development totally impressed the jury among the more than 60 entries.
Strict selection criteria for a unique industry award
Jury member Dr. Chris Yates from VISION VENTURES: “The VISION Award is unique. It does not distinguish between an innovative component or an innovative product. Both are treated equally. The Award is presented solely on the basis of an overall innovation and effect – two areas in which the entry from Toshiba Teli Corporation certainly scored high marks.”
Yates also stated the reasons why Toshiba Teli Corporation came out on top despite strong competitors: “The jury was impressed by the new technical approach for detecting very fine scratches and irregularities, especially on glassy or highly polished surfaces. A large number of products nowadays have such surfaces, often with extremely high demands on their quality.
The winning entry in the VISION Award describes for this purpose a solution which is simple enough to be also used by lay persons, but sensitive enough to detect flaws measuring up to a few millionths of a metre.” Yates also said that the entry for the VISION Award can also be used in a new application, i.e. to evaluate surface roughness: with materials such as paints and coatings where the microstructure of the surface can vary depending on the application process, roughness changes are visible as colour differences.
The jury determined that the technology is not only a new optical process, but that it also does not require any software processing in order to increase the visibility of hard to detect material flaws which are known to be difficult to map. “This feature shows that the technology can be implemented in production systems or inline systems and provides an immediate picture of all flaws. The VISION Award jury warmly congratulates the team from Toshiba Teli Corporation for its excellent entry and is looking forward to the further development of the technology,” added Yates.
“I am very honored to receive the prestigious VISION Award. The motivation for developing this SFD (Surface Flow Detection) Scope came from the various inspection consultations we received from our customers. There were many cases where even scratches that could be identified by the eyes of skilled technicians could not be detected by conventional machine vision systems”, said Shinichi Itokawa, Board Member, Chief Technology Executive and Director of Machine Vision Camera, Toshiba Teli Corporation.
In addition to the winner, i.e. Toshiba Teli Corporation, the following entries made the short list:
- “VIS Expert – Integrated Quality Assurance System Electronic Component Assembly” (AiRob Vision Systems Sp. z o.o.)
- “100% Inline Combined 2D/3D Microscopy” (AIT Austrian Institute of Technology)
- “Xelity Hybrid Switch – Bye-bye control cabinet!” (Murrelektronik GmbH)
- “The Next Chapter in Digital Imaging” (PxE Holographic Imaging)
All five companies had the opportunity to present their innovations today to an interested audience and the media during a one-hour session on the Forum stage. The Award was handed over to the winner by Dr. Chris Yates who gave the laudatory speech in his capacity as a member of the jury.
High technical excellence in all entries
Yates praised the entries which all demonstrated a high level of technical excellence, addressed a clear need and are capable of offering value to a wide range of end users.
“Innovative combinations of optical elements and software have been used to create powerful new sensing capabilities in each of the entries from PxE Imaging, Toshiba Teli, and AIT. Expanding the scope of what can be measured and inspected by vision technology is a key driver of growth, and each of these innovations highlights an attractive new direction,” said Yates. “A modular design and deployment philosophy is central to the hybrid switch from Murrelektronik and also the AI vision system of AiRob. Scalable or distributed solution architectures can offer strong benefits to end users, typically reducing maintenance and roll-out costs. Automated quality control of manual operations is also a complex task, but one where AI vision offers a technical solution as shown in the AiRob entry.”
