Putting on a brave face

I’m just back from the “Robots & Vision” show in Chicagoland, and I’d like to share my impressions. Today I’ll cover the general business outlook: over the next few days I’ll discuss some of the more interesting highlights (yes, there were several.)

The Vision part was not particularly big, and some of the major players were noticeably absent (yes Cognex, I am talking about you,) but it was good to see that a number of integrators had taken booths. This let attendees explore how to use machine vision, rather than just admiring cases full of lenses, cameras and framegrabbers.

To give a couple of examples, Dunkley and MCS Vision were integrators with interesting displays, while tucked away on the Edmund Optics stand I also found a little demo from Aptura Machine Vision Solutions. In fairness to my friends in Natick, I should mention that a couple of Cognex ASP’s were ready to discuss specific, real-world, problems. But that said, the majority of booths were taken by folks selling lights and cameras. I’m not saying that’s bad, but hardware alone doesn’t solve problems.

In terms of attendance, the show looked busy with plenty of visitors milling in the aisles, but it’s hard for me to judge what proportion might represent new business for the vendors there. People I spoke with said that attendance was down around 30% on the last show (2007,) which would match with the general sense that business is down around a third. But it’s quality of leads that matters, not quantity, so I hope those who’d taken space at the show eventually see a return on their investment.

The good news though is that the tough business conditions seem to have spurred a flurry of innovation. Browsing the displays, I came across a number of new and upgraded products that qualify for the “That’s Pretty Neat” award.

What were they? You’ll have to check back tomorrow for that.