National Instruments, a member of UKIVA, recently organised and hosted a vision and automation forum. The comprehensive programme of talks included contributions from other UKIVA members Alrad Imaging, Firstsight Vision and Flir Systems.
Don Braggins, Director of UKIVA, says: "I am delighted that our members can work together in this way. Although in some areas members are competitive, in others they are complementary. By harnessing complementary contributions from fellow members, National Instruments was able to add value to the forum and to broaden the topics covered. Our members are used to contributing to UKIVA seminars at the major trade shows, but I believe that this is the first time that some have collaborated independently."
The presentations were organised into tracks on vision and industrial automation. The vision track covered the various technologies used in machine vision including lighting, optics, different camera types, frame grabbers and configuring systems. The industrial automation track covered a host of topics including developing an embedded data-logging system and ways of taking advantage of industrial switches and wireless access points to build distributed systems. All the presentations from both tracks can be accessed on www.ni.com/uk/vaforum.