Organizers of the Vision 2010 trade show have announced that the show attracted more exhibitors and visitors than ever before, exceeding its previous record results from 2008 in all areas. The conference, which was held Nov. 9 to 11, drew approximately 6800 visitors from more than 50 countries, predominantly from Europe, the US and South Korea. In 2008, there were 6200 visitors and last year only 5700 because of the economic crisis. With 323 exhibitors in 2010, Vision managed for the first time to cross the 300 mark; 44 percent of the exhibitors came from abroad – never before as many. Last year, 297 exhibitors took part. The international character of visitors rose slightly, to about 35 percent of attendees. According to 84 percent of surveyed visitors, they came to the trade show with concrete intentions to invest and purchase. Components, as well as applications, for machine vision were the visitors’ primary interest. Almost every fourth person was looking for turnkey machine vision systems. A quarter of the visitors were end users, almost 20 percent were OEM customers of mechanical engineering and plant construction; i.e., as original equipment manufacturers, they purchase components or software from the original manufacturer. "Many users are looking for complete solutions and (they) discussed feasibility and integration with us. This figure was not so high in the past. The international character of the visitors also clearly increased. We achieved the objective with respect to desired customer contacts and are expecting good post trade fair business," said Roman Vracko, product marketing manager, Sensor/Vision, of Omron in Nufringen, on the survey result. "All in all we are satisfied with Vision 2010. We felt a huge willingness to invest, both in our core buying industries, mechanical engineering, electrical and automotive industry, as well as in application fields" said Olav Munkelt, chairman of the VDMA Machine Vision, Frankfurt, and Managing Director of MVTec Software GmbH in Munich. In nonindustrial machine vision – mainly the areas of security technology and transport – medicine and sports are emerging markets; ball contact evaluation in soccer and golf swing analysis are current examples. Car systems that can detect dangerous momentary nodding off and trigger an immediate warning to the driver also are interesting for end users, as well as thermal imaging cameras that can "see" considerably further at night than any automotive high beam. Visitors came from diverse manufacturing industries, such as mechanical engineering, electro-technology/electronics, precision engineering and optics, medical technology, automotive industry, as well as their supplier industries, but also machine vision itself. Every second person came from development, every third from research and the others were business or corporate management. "The concept of Vision, to increasingly address the end user, has succeeded. Special shows such as the ‘Vision Application Park’ and the ‘Integration Area’ were a major contributor in this regard. Using the example of Playmobil figures, the Vision Application Park demonstrated how machine vision systems, combined with handling, automation, packaging and labeling technology applications, interact for the purpose of quality assurance. The Integration Area clearly showed which factors play a role in the inclusion of machine vision systems in an application," said Thomas Walter of Messe Stuttgart. Visitors appeared very satisfied with the products and services offered at Vision, with 92 percent planning to come back next year. Vision 2011 will take place Nov. 8 to 10 at the new Stuttgart Trade Fair Center. For more information, visit: www.messe-stuttgart.de