This year the leading world trade fair for machine vision is characterised more than ever by the dynamic changes of the industry: The long-forecast consolidation of the machine vision market was used very dynamically in recent months and led to a significant structural change. As a result of these developments, a number of new names now enhance the trade fair in addition to the established VISION exhibitors such as Basler, Cognex, IDS, HIK Vision, MVTec, Sony, Stemmer Imaging, Teledyne Dalsa and many other international market leaders. New exhibitors include young companies such as Autosensic, DeeDiim Sensors or Photolitics, who will present their innovative approaches to various machine vision applications. At VISION 2020, the TKH Group will present the potential of its brands Allied Vision, Chromasens, Mikrotron, NET, SVS-Vistek, Tattile and LMI for the first time.

There has also been major further development from a technological perspective since the last VISION in 2018. "Since then significant advances have been made in the areas of Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Embedded Vision, Polarisation and Hyperspectral Imaging, among others, thus making possible numerous groundbreaking innovations", says the long-term VISION Project Manager, Florian Niethammer. Exhibitors such as Arrow, deepsense.ai, Inspekto, Lucid Vision Labs, LuxFlux, Perception Park, SqueezeBrains or The Imaging Source show the applications these systems now permit in the various industrial and non-industrial fields of application.

"Many experts see machine vision as an essential element for the profitable use of Industry 4.0 concepts in automated production", adds Niethammer. The acceptance of machine vision in this important application area has increased substantially, as demonstrated by the participation of companies B&R and Beckhoff in VISION. Up to now both companies have been mainly known from the control and automation world, but have now discovered the machine vision market and will present their concepts to visitors in Stuttgart for the first time at their exhibition stands.

Messe Stuttgart is very satisfied with the current status of registrations:

Over 300 exhibitors have already booked their stand areas. Niethammer is anticipating around 500 exhibiting companies for the start of the event. "Like in previous years all important national and international industry players will be represented in Stuttgart. With the additional companies VISION gains momentum once again and expands its exhibition programme with regard to the integration of machine vision technology in automation." Particularly pleasing is the fact that in 2020 start-ups from machine vision with a special offer have an even more attractive stage at VISION. Details about the concept will be available shortly.

Niethammer is delighted that the current key industry topics and technological advances will be competently presented anew each time at VISION: "At VISION 2020 visitors can once again expect the who's who of the global market leaders in all technical disciplines of machine vision, as well as a comprehensive accompanying programme on all aspects of this technology. There is no better opportunity to obtain information about the current trends and developments in this industry than at VISION."