Cognex Brings In-Sight To Machine Vision

INTERFACE CHANGES
Cognex must adapt its tools for the environment in which they will operate. In the early days of machine vision, RS-232 ports provided serial communications with host systems. These systems simply needed to give a Yes or No response: High bandwidth was unnecessary. Next came standard buses like VME and then PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect), a local bus standard for PCs. Now everything in manufacturing is Ethernet, so In-Sight is entirely Ethernet driven.

The elements of a spreadsheet basis and game-pad controls integrated in a rugged housing that tied into an Ethernet network succeeded. "In-Sight is growing faster than anything we've seen in the past. It grew to more than a quarter of our total revenue in 2003," says Silver.

Revenue from In-Sight for the first three quarters of 2003 was nearly $30 million. Figures 4, 5, and 6 show some of the broad range of products that make up the In-Sight family.

LOOKING AHEAD
Although Cognex has several new products scheduled for launch the first half of this year, Silver is very reluctant to predict the future in machine vision. "That's extremely dangerous. Asking an expert is often no better than throwing darts at a dartboard," he says. Without a doubt, it's moving in the direction of inexpensive intelligent sensors.

"We have hardly begun to scratch the surface of machine-vision applications and technology," says Silver. "We have examples in the world of human vision that are so far in advance of anything we can make with machines, that I don't expect us to catch up in my lifetime or my children's."