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One of the trend topics during the recent Vision trade show in Stuttgart has been standardization. Boring, yawn, unsexy – one might think. But wait a second ! Standardization of the main parts of a machine vision system, is just the opposite: a highly attractive topic. And this is so for all parties involved. Customers and users of machine vision profit by standards due to the increased transparency of the decision relevant criteria, the improved possibility to integrate different modules with each other, the avoidance of interface problems and the resulting cost eficiency as well as significantly higher security of their investments. The supplier of the machine vision product gains from the subsequent increase of the product´s usage, owing to the fact that technical and economical barriers on the user side are reduced. It is also to their benefit, of course, that at least for the standardized aspects of their product range they do not have to re-invent the wheel over and over again and thus can direct their development resources to areas where significant competetive advantages can be won.

Before either one of both sides can leverage these advantages, however, much time, effort and a good measure of enthusiasm has to be invested. A successful industry standard naturally requires that the technical details are worked out by the industry itself and that the result is accepted and put into action by at least the major part of this industry. For Machine Vision, this work is executed today in standardization working groups surpassing the barriers of companies, countries and languages, supported by the three major Machine Vision associations: EMVA; AIA and JIIA. The current status of the standards has been presented during the Vision trade show with lectures as part of the Industrial Vision Days but also at the special exhibition „Vision Standards“. Organized by the EMVA and the trade show all three associations presented here the standards they host: GigE Vision, CameraLink, GenICam, EMVA 1288 and Lens Mount. This exhibition has been highly informative, well presented – one could even say sexy.