Dr Mike Aldred from Dyson Ltd and Dr Graham Deacon from Ocado Technology have been announced as the keynote speakers for the UKIVA Machine Vision Conference and Exhibition to be held at Arena MK on 27th April 2017. Both keynote addresses will illustrate how vision technology has relevance to everyday life such as household cleaning and shopping. Dr. Aldred’s presentation will cover the design journey that brought the Dyson 360 Eye™ robot vacuum cleaner to market. Dr.Deacon will look at the challenges in developing a 3D vision guided robot capable of picking and placing fruit and vegetables for shopping orders.

Dr. Aldred is ‘Electronics Category Lead - Robotics and Cordless’ at Dyson and manages the robotics team on the Dyson 360 Eye™ robot vacuum cleaner. The 360Eye utilises images from a 360° Field Of View camera to locate itself within its environment. Mike and his team developed bespoke algorithms for everything from exposure control to feature tracking to location recognition as part of the development cycle for the robot. Vision is the core enabler for the product and one of the keys to its success.

Dr. Deacon is ‘Robotics Research Team Leader’ at Ocado Technology. Ocado is the world’s largest on-line only grocer. The robotics research team at Ocado Technology, under Graham’s guidance, has been investigating the use of robot manipulators to pack shopping orders. Given the number, the diversity and the variability of the products that Ocado stocks the robots need to be sensor-guided. This talk will describe some of the work that the team has done using 3D point cloud cameras in order to pick and pack groceries with robots.

Dr. Aldred’s presentation will open the morning session of the Machine Vision Conference at 10 AM, and Dr. Deacon will begin the afternoon session at 1.30 PM. More details can be found on the event website.

The Conference itself will feature over 50 technical vision seminars across 6 separate presentation theatres offering a rich program of the latest developments, technologies and applications as well as machine vision basics. Visitors can therefore tailor their day according to their particular interests and level of knowledge. The 6 theatres will cover 3D vision, Camera technology, Optics & illumination, Systems and applications, Software and embedded vision and Understanding vision technology. Visitor registration is now open.

The Conference is accompanied by a dedicated exhibition featuring 45 of the world’s leading companies in the field of vision.