More than 100 developers from Europe, North America and Asia representing about forty machine vision companies met during the spring edition of the International Vision Standards Meeting (IVSM) from 17-20 April in Vienna which was hosted by the EMVA and the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) where the event was held. The International Vision Standards Meeting combines the global machine vision standardization efforts and goes back two decades to the kick-off meeting for the GigE Vision standard in June 2003. Since then, the supporting associations A3 (North America), CMVU (China), EMVA (Europe), JIIA (Japan), and VDMA (Germany) alternate as hosts for the biannual meetings.

The event was a complete success for both EMVA and AIT. Markus Clabian, Head of the High-Performance Vision Systems research group at the Center for Vision, Automation & Control (VAC), comments: ‘For us, it was a strategic decision to host the IVSM. Our aim is to significantly increase the visibility of AIT and our technologies in the professional community, demonstrating the deep expertise in the field of machine vision at the AIT Center for Vision, Automation & Control. In addition, as a research and development organization, the exchange with experts is crucial to us, not only on a professional level but also to understand the needs of the market. At the IVSM we talked to the experts and companies from China, Japan, Canada, USA, Belgium, Germany, and many more, and discussed opportunities for collaboration. Thirdly, during the tours through various AIT Labs, we were able to show different innovative application fields of machine vision, where vision standards clearly demonstrate its value.’

Plugfest: live tests for software and components compatibility and interoperability

The ‘Plugfest’ is a special highlight at each meeting, where experts apply the standards and connect a wide range of products, some of which are new. Reynold Dodson is President of the company BitFlow and Chair of the CameraLink standard, as well as a member of the CoaXPress working group. He describes the plugfest function as an important part of the meeting: ‘In the machine vision industry, a plugfest is chance for all the firms that work on the standard to test the interoperability of their products. These plugfests serve a number of purposes, they improve specifications, they provide a venue for mandatory interoperability testing and they tighten and enhance the social aspects of standards creation. The ultimate goal of plugfests, like the standards they exercise, is to improve the customer experience. For CoaXPress, this was the first year that products were required to pass a validation framework, which presented some new challenges, but which will ultimately strengthen market confidence in the standard.” During the meeting in Vienna, the plugfest for the first time was opened to the professional community outside the companies and institutions involved in the standards working groups.