For the entire machine vision industry, the VDMA forecast sales growth of 7 percent in 2023. For this period, i.e. the entire year 2023, IDS expects sales growth of between 15 and 20 percent. The reason is the "current gloom in the market." Nevertheless, the order backlog is currently 10 percent above the company's expectations.

The strong growth is also fed by orders piled up during the pandemic, which the camera manufacturer is still processing. "Our order books are well filled and are being processed at record levels after the pandemic-related bottlenecks," explains IDS CEO Alexander Lewinsky. In addition, he says IDS has learned lessons from this time and has adjusted its supply chain and production accordingly.

Current trends: 3D, low-cost and high-speed cameras

The current growth is essentially based on three pillars: "On the one hand, we are observing a further strong growth in the 3D segment," explains IDS Managing Director Jan Hartmann. In addition, the demand for low-cost camera models is increasing. And cameras with high data rates as well as faster and larger sensors are also increasingly in demand.

One of the top topics in the industry in terms of process optimization and thus cost reduction is artificial intelligence (AI): "Digitization and AI, coupled with machine vision, are key components for automation and robotics, which are advancing in huge dimensions," Hartmann is certain. "Machine Vision in combination with AI opens up new fields of application that we urgently need to meet global challenges such as a shortage of skilled workers or global warming. Resource-saving applications will inevitably become increasingly important in this context. Vision systems can make a decisive contribution here."