ANN ARBOR, MI-The Vision Show, held in Boston, MA, May 25-27, had double the attendees of 2009’s show and conference. The positive response to the show and conference parallel the recovery of the market and growth in the industries that are seeking vision and imaging solutions. The show is North America’s largest stand alone machine vision and imaging technology show, sponsored by the Automated Imaging Association (AIA), the global industry trade group.

The four day Vision Conference provided training for a variety of experience levels. The AIA launched its Certified Vision Professional program in Boston. To earn “CVP” status, individuals must pass an exam based on the basic tutorial programs AIA offers in the fundamentals of machine vision, beginning lighting and optics, basic vision software and algorithms, and camera and image sensor technology basics. About 30% of the conference attendees took the Certified Vision Professional – Basic Level exam with 82% of those passing.

“The CVP program has value for end users, system integrators, OEMs and suppliers in the industry,” said Greg Hollows, AIA Vice-Chairman and Director, Machine Vision Solutions at Edmund Optics. “Achieving certification will be an asset to individuals who want to establish their knowledge base within their company and industry. AIA is a leading global authority and AIA certification will be a very impressive achievement for career advancement,” he added.

The show featured vision and imaging technologies from 82 leading companies and featured cameras, optics, lighting, software, components and complete vision systems. Nearly 1,900 people registered from 19 countries to see new technology innovations launched at the show. “We were thrilled with the show and conference,” said Jeff Burnstein, president of the Automated Imaging Association. “Several past exhibitors who chose not to exhibit at this year’s show paid us a high compliment by telling us that they wished they had exhibited this year,” Burnstein added.

“We were pleasantly surprised with the quantity and quality of the attendees at this years’ Vision Show. We were naturally a bit concerned going into the show due to the remaining uncertainties in the economy and restricted travel budgets but attendance seemed to reflect the pick-up we are seeing in the US with our camera customers. We found many new potential customers and new applications that give us optimism towards an even brighter future for Basler and the machine vision industry,” commented John Jennings, chief commercial officer at Basler Vision Technologies.

“It was great to be back in Boston for another successful Vision Show. Attendance and activity at the show seemed to be better than in the recent past, which seems to indicate that our market is healthy emerging from the Great Recession. The gathering of industry leaders and abundance of new products and technologies should prove a great benefit to the entire marketplace,” said Jim Sullivan, Director of Sales – Industrial Optics at Schneider Optics Inc. The AIA stated that one of the goals for this year’s show was to reach a broad spectrum of industries, providing a hands-on opportunity to see how vision can help companies find innovative ways to increase quality, streamline processes, and find better ways to increase production efficiencies, all while keeping in line with their goal to reduce costs. “Registrants came from traditional sectors that use vision, such as aerospace, pharmaceuticals, automotive, food and beverage, military/defense, semiconductor, medical device, consumer goods and electronics,” said Rusty Ponce de Leon, Chairman of the AIA and President of Phase 1 Technology Corp. “But we also saw people from high end security/surveillance, scientific imaging, entertainment, biometrics, mapping, metrology, energy, and intelligent signage, to name a few non-traditional industries.“