Matrix Vision Celebrates Its 30th Anniversary

Whether on land, in water or in the air - industrial image processing has now penetrated almost all areas. However, the manufacturers in this industry segment are largely unknown to the public, as they do not appear as a technology supplier for the end product. Matrix Vision GmbH, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, is a "hidden champion" based in Swabian Oppenweiler near Stuttgart - a look back into the future.

When Gerhard Thullner and Werner Armingeon founded the company in 1986, they had no idea that the company, with almost 100 employees, had exceptionally broad technological know-how 30 years later. The young company does not have its roots directly in image processing, but started developing software for atomic absorption spectrometers. In contrast to the branch orientation, the roles of the company's founders were clear from the start. While Armingeon took care of the technical part, Thullner was responsible for the commercial area of ​​the company. The team developed a feeling for interpreting technological trends and realigning the company.

Market leader in Atari graphics controllers

In the early years of computers, Atari products were in high demand among early adopters such as universities and users with graphic tasks. Thullner and Armingeon developed a graphics controller for Atari computers with large screens. In 1989 the two presented this novelty after six weeks of development at the Cebit in Hanover. According to the company, the company became the market leader with the Atari graphics controllers, but did not rest on its laurels. The two engineers had already set out for new shores when Atari was overtaken by the PCs. The discussion about bringing their knowledge of graphic controllers into the booming PC market was quickly ended. "There were already established companies and therefore the market was too risky for us," explains Thullner.The company started developing frame grabbers for industrial applications. This electronic component is used to digitize analog video signals. They had entered the still young machine vision industry.

From the intelligent camera to the deposit machine

This opened up a new field for Armingeon, who found the standard compilation of an image processing solution with a frame grabber, camera and PC to be too complex and unreliable. The intelligent camera was born by integrating all components into one product. Matrix Vision can claim to have launched one of the first intelligent cameras on the market. "This project had to lag behind other tasks for some time, otherwise we would have been on the market earlier," says the head of development in retrospect. Intelligent cameras were the basis for many solutions: traffic flow monitoring in Great Britain, intelligent sewing machines, spectacle lens grinding machines and letter sorting systems in France or deposit machines in Germany. Uwe Furtner,responsible for the product conception and partner at Matrix Vision since 1996, contributed significantly to the success of the deposit machine project. Due to the legally stipulated introduction date, it was only a few months from the start of development to the delivery of several thousand systems.

After interfaces such as USB and Ethernet had established themselves on the market, standard cameras supplemented the frame grabbers from 2004 as a standard product line. Today the company has more than 210 camera variants, which have established themselves on the market due to their special features. For example, the FPGA used in all cameras takes on a number of processing tasks and thus relieves the load on the host system. The internal image memories ensure image transmission without data loss. These are all requirements that have increased in importance in terms of green automation and seamless process monitoring in recent years.

Content of the article:

• Page 1: Matrix Vision celebrates its 30th anniversary
• Page 2: Smart Cameras for Industry 4.0

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