Record orders mark the end of 2021

MICHAEL WHEELER, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF MICHAEL.WHEELER@PHOTONICS.COM

Last month, the quarterly earnings began trickling in for several publicly traded industry bellwethers — Stemmer, Cognex, and Basler. And the numbers paint a rosy picture.

In its November earnings statement, Stemmer posted revenue of €99.5 million ($112.4 million), up almost 29% year over year. And in North America, Cognex posted $285 million for the third quarter, a 13% increase over the same quarter last year. It was the highest quarterly revenue in the company’s 40-year history.

But while the revenue numbers tell one story, orders tell another — one of pent up demand for vision systems. Basler’s booked orders were up a whopping 85% over the first nine months. And quarter over quarter, its orders rose more than 137% over the same period from 2020.

Here’s to continued momentum going into 2022!

In this issue

One segment of the vision market that is poised for continued growth is video surveillance, driven by increasing concerns about public safety and security. According to MarketsandMarkets, the global video surveillance market is projected to grow from $45.5 billion in 2020 to $74.6 billion in 2025.

This market growth will lead to smaller thermal vision systems, which often operate in high-heat environments. These systems must be kept cool, and traditional heat sinks are often insufficient. Learn more about thermoelectric cooling in our cover story, “Active Cooling Expands Design Options for Thermal Cameras” by Andrew Dereka here.

Another important factor behind the success of a given vision system is lighting. It’s especially important with dynamic vision systems — those that are used in applications with moving or changing viewpoints. Smart Vision Lights’ Steve Kinney examines the unique role of intelligent lighting in “Intelligent Lighting Brings Machine Vision to New Heights” here.

Finally, AI is increasingly used on edge devices, with convolutional neural networks used to classify images. “Running AI at the Edge” by Kevin McCabe begins here.

We hope you enjoy the issue!
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