As part of the VISION Start-Up World, young companies also had the opportunity again in 2024 to raise their profile and position themselves against the competition by participating in the Pitch Sessions on the Forum stage.
At the end of every exhibition day, the Start-up of the Day was chosen from among the participating innovators; an independent jury then selected the overall winner from among the day winners at the end of the trade fair. The coveted title of “VISION 2024 Start-up” was won this year by the French company Viziotix – Finding Every Barcode in Automation Solutions – which, in addition to clinching overall victory, was chosen as the Start-up of the Day on the second day of VISION 2024. Viziotix impressed the jury with an innovative software which turns every device containing a camera into highly efficient barcode scanners, including smartphones, robots and drones.
The software also quickly and easily identifies damaged and hard to scan barcodes, for example in large images containing numerous codes or in poor light conditions. “It is an entirely new solution. The first applications are already running, and the reviews are extremely positive. That’s the reason why we chose Viziotix,” said jury member Martin Klenke, Director of Business Development at Teledyne Imaging and a member of the Executive Committee of the VDMA Machine Vision Association, in explaining the decision by the jury.
Tie between digital twins and holographic imaging
Choosing the day winners in the VISION Start-up World was not always easy. That’s why there were two winners on the first day of the trade fair: Medabsy from Dingolfing in Bavaria and PxE Holographic Imaging from Israel. Medabsy showed by means of a Cloud-based platform how quickly and easily inspections are planned using digital twins and how synthetic images are created as training data for AI applications before the hardware is available.
“Since this reduces project times and costs considerably, Medabsy could fundamentally change the market for system integration,” said jury member Mark Williamson, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the VDMA Machine Vision Association. PxE Holographic Imaging scored points with holographic imaging. The technology makes it possible to simultaneous capture and merge high-resolution colour images, infrared images and pixel-level depth maps using a single, standard 2D camera. “Scaling opens up many applications which can replace conventional 3D camera technologies such as time-of-flight and stereo at potentially lower costs,” said Williamson in explaining the choice of the second day winner.
Genuine no-code interface from India
The Start-up of the Day on the third day of VISION 2024 was the automation specialist Orama Solutions LLP from New Delhi with Orama-I, a genuine “no-code” interface for inspection. This interface offers both end users and system integrators the advantages of AI-based machine vision. “Orama-I can be used to create end-to-end solutions without any knowledge of machine vision or programming,” said Donato Montanari, Vice President and Managing Director of the Machine Vision Division of Zebra Technologies and a member of the Executive Committee of the VDMA Machine Vision Association, in describing the award-winning solution. “The tool can easily be used intuitively, and is suitable for a large number of visual inspection applications.”
In 2024 the VISION Start-up World was held for the third time and proved once again that the world’s leading trade fair for machine vision is an important stepping stone for young companies in the industry. “We welcomed 24 start-ups from all over the world this year,” said Florian Niethammer, VISION Project Manager. “We saw exciting product innovations in the areas of machine vision and computer vision, as well as future-oriented camera technologies, machine vision systems, and AI and deep learning software. We are already looking forward to VISION 2026 and seeing how the award-winning VISION 2024 Start-ups will have developed by then. And we are also naturally eager to see what newcomers will then present their company at the world’s leading trade fair for machine vision in Stuttgart from 6 to 8 October 2026.”
