The EMVA Board of Directors and the entire EMVA staff are shocked about the sudden and unexpected death of Arnaud Darmont who died on September 12th after a tragic accident in the White Sands National Monument in New Mexico/USA. “With the death of Arnaud, the EMVA and in more general the entire imaging industry lost a bright and driven person who contributed significantly to both educating and advancing the industry” said EMVA President Jochem Herrmann. “Arnaud will be terribly missed. Our thoughts are with his parents and his brother”.

Vision entrepreneur driven by education idea

Arnaud Darmont dedicated his entire professional life to the computer vision industry. After his degree in electronic engineering from University of Liège (Belgium) in 2002 he began to work in the field of CMOS image sensors and high dynamic range imaging. Arnaud combined technical enthusiasm for optoelectronics with human values which led him to found his own enterprise APHESA in 2008. He authored several publications and was author of the book "High Dynamic Range Imaging – Sensors and Architectures”, which was published in a first edition 2013. He was just about finishing up the second edition to appear this year. A strong focus of his work always was the dissemination of his knowledge within the vision community and to newcomers in the computer vision domain through trainings and custom electronics design of imaging devices. He already prepared the celebration of the 10 years anniversary of APHESA at the end of this month.

A passion for machine vision standardization

Since the very beginning of his professional career, Arnaud was an active and much valued member of the EMVA 1288 standardization group. “By his profound knowledge of image sensors and by his rich experience he helped to shape the EMVA 1288 standard to the globally used standard it is today. Arnaud was also busy advertising the standard all around the globe giving courses and educating the machine vision community”, said Prof. Dr. Bernd Jähne, Chair of the EMVA 1288 Standard Group and EMVA Board Member.

Starting the successful cooperation of his company APHESA with DELTATEC SA in 2017 Arnaud gained freedom to devote more of his professional time to education and standardization activities. As such, in December 2017 the EMVA was gifted to get him on board as Standards Manager. In this position he oversaw the development of EMVA standards, but also fostered cooperation with other imaging associations worldwide on the development and the dissemination of vision standards. “We all remember how Arnaud took this role with enthusiasm and high commitment. Though he served in this position for a bit less than a year, he facilitated the start of two new EMVA standards, and built bridges to other associations. As such, he established links with standards groups of IEEE and was an active member of SPIE and IS&T. The foundation he led during this time will be part of his legacy to the entire machine vision industry”, said EMVA President Jochem Herrmann.

Arnaud contributed to the life of his city community by being an active member of local associations. When his job gave him some freedom, Arnaud indulged his passion for photography and piloted private planes as hobby.