Turning 20

The company was founded in 1996 as Vision Components GmbH by Michael Engel, whose pioneering invention of the first industrial Smart Camera VC11 heralded the embedded era in image processing. Whether it's the perfect cut of fish fillets, precise automated "bin picking" or reliable decoding of license plates – the team at Vision Components develops customized components for successful embedded vision solutions in a great variety of industries, and advises customers how to seize the full potential for their application.

Over the years, the industry pioneers have time and again succeeded in developing innovative hardware as well as software products. Notably, Vision Components freely programmable OEM Board Cameras and intelligent high-performance cameras enable the use of image processing solutions in more and more industries where this technology is a new concept.

Landmark achievements include not only the first Smart Camera, but also the first Vision Sensor, and now the recently developed Z-series. This camera series is based on a Xilinx SoC module equipped with a dual-core ARM processor and features FPGA logic. This opens up completely new options of FPGA programming, with huge performance gains coming within reach for many applications. Vision Components provides a custom Linux OS and the versatile software library VCLib, an in-house development, and also supports customers with extensive free application know-how.