Fabulous!

That’s how Dr. Shillman describes Cognex’s results for Q2 2010, and with revenues up 75% from the same period in 2009, who can argue? Of course, it’s profit that matters, but with a turnaround from $6m in the red to a profit of almost $15m, the big yellow vision machine is clearly doing something right.

It’s “Factory Automation” that’s driving the performance, which is the term Cognex use to describe the industrial use of machine vision – that’s places like auto plants – and they are particularly thrilled by the margins generated by their “Modular Vision Systems Division”. I think that means products like the InSight, InSight Micro, Checker and Dataman are all nice earners.

A look at the “revenue by geography” tab is interesting: the Asian market seems to be leading the recovery, although Europe and North America are doing their part too.

If Cognex is a bellwether for the machine vision industry, 2010 is looking like a good year.