Genicam Celebrates 20 Years as the Interface Standard for Industrial Cameras
Since 2006, Genicam has been standardizing the control of industrial cameras, regardless of manufacturer or interface. The EMVA is now working on adjustments to comply with the Cyber Resilience Act.
The Genicam image processing standard is 20 years old. The European Machine Vision Association (EMVA) celebrated this anniversary at Vision 2026 in Stuttgart together with the GigE Vision interface standard, which was also introduced in 2006. Genicam was developed with the goal of uniformly addressing and configuring industrial cameras regardless of the manufacturer or interface used. As a result, software and image processing systems do not need to be fundamentally adapted for every camera or interface. The freely available reference implementation is being further developed by an EMVA working group.
According to the experts involved, standardization has, in particular, reduced the effort required for the development, integration, and subsequent adaptation of image processing systems. Today, Genicam is widely used in industrial image processing. A new challenge has arisen due to the European Cyber Resilience Act (CRA). Since the Genicam reference implementation is also affected by the regulatory changes, the responsible EMVA working group is currently working on a solution for its future deployment.
The key date is December 11, 2027: As of that date, key obligations under the CRA will take effect for products containing digital elements. The EMVA therefore intends to further develop the reference implementation so that it can remain available even under the new regulatory conditions. The anniversary celebration at Vision thus also highlights how the requirements for machine vision standards are changing: In addition to interoperability and easy integration, regulatory and cybersecurity requirements will also take center stage in the future.
