The winners of the inspect award have been announced! A jury consisting of Anne Wendel, machine vision specialist in the Robotics + Automation Association at VDMA, Thomas Lübkemeier, General Secretary of EMVA, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Michael Heizmann, Professor at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Dr. Nick Leithold, until recently a cluster manager at Spectronet, as well as the readers of inspect and inspect online have decided.

The winners in the Automation & Control category

3rd Place: Depalletizer from Photoneo

Third place in the Automation & Control category was taken by Photoneo with the Depalletizer, an intelligent automation solution for unloading pallets loaded with boxes with the help of artificial intelligence. The core of the innovation is the combination of internally developed 3D image processing and machine learning algorithms that have been trained and tested for more than 5,000 types of boxes. The AI ​​recognizes each box and sends a command to the robot. The specially developed universal gripper carries out the gripping process with an accuracy of + -3 mm. It can unload 1,000 crates / hour with an accuracy of 99.7%.

2nd Place: X-Ray and CT System UX20 from Yxlon

Yxlon won second place in the Automation & Control category with its modular, compact X-ray system, which can be adapted to the needs of the user with options and upgrades. The interface, which combines all the programs involved, enables intuitive control with joysticks and buttons with graphic elements, presets and wizards. The menu-driven creation of automatic test sequences is just as easy as a manual X-ray and CT examination.

1st Place: Hexapod H-860 from Physik Instrumente

This year, the winner in the Automation & Control category went to Physik Instrumente GmbH & Co. KG with the Hexapod H-860. This is a kinematic system that was specially developed for testing the image stabilization function in camera systems, smartphones and camera modules. It is based on shifting the positions of the joints. Its special design with solid body joints and contactless magnetic drive principle has neither rubbing nor rolling parts for guides and joints and is therefore designed for maximum service life and operating time. A contactless measuring linear encoder ensures reliable position control and high repeat accuracy.

The winners in the Vision category

3rd place: 1.1-inch lens series with liquid lenses from Edmund Optics

Third place in the Vision category went to the 1.1-inch lens series with liquid lenses from Edmund Optics. The innovation is that it has solved the problem of vignetting when used with larger sensors. It is now possible to image light in the edge areas of these large sensors.

2nd place: The Vision System from B&R

We award second place in the Vision category to an image processing system consisting of cameras, lenses, lighting and software that can be seamlessly integrated into your own system control: the B&R vision system. This reduces the time required for the integration from several days to a few hours.

1st place: Verisens sensors XF900 and XC900 from Baumer

The Baumer Verisens vision sensors XF900 and XC900 all revolve around the automated coordinate comparison with Universal Robots without the usual manual "hand-eye calibration". The basis is a the patent pending SmartGrid – an calibration target with an intelligent bit pattern applied in a checkerboard pattern. A limited section is enough for the vision sensor to determine its position. Since the cobot knows its position, an automated coordinate comparison is carried out using intelligent algorithms and a few movement steps. In addition, the system uses the checkerboard pattern as a basis for distance-dependent coordinate scaling, image rectification and for conversion into world coordinates.

Congratulations to all winners!