Former UKIVA Director Dies

The UK Industrial Vision Association (UKIVA) has announced the death of its former director, Don Braggins, 70. Braggins was highly regarded in the world of industrial vision and made an outstanding contribution to UKIVA. He was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor in October 2010.

Braggins’ Machine Vision Consultancy was one of the founding members of the association in 1992, and in 1995, he took over its administration. This was a role he continued, as well as providing technical support, for 14 years before overseeing the transition of the association into a special-interest group of the Processing & Packaging Machinery Association (PPMA) in 2009. He continued as a consultant to the association until December 2010.

Besides the role he played for the association, Braggins was active in many other areas of vision. He was elected a fellow of SPIE in 1990. He was a member of the jury for the annual “Innovation” prize at the Vision exhibition in Stuttgart from 2000 to 2009 and served on the executive committee of the European Machine Vision Association for six years.

He was passionate about spreading the word on the uses of vision industry – the prime objective of UKIVA, and he wrote numerous articles on the subject. In addition, from 2005 to 2009, he was associate editor for machine vision for the peer-reviewed SPIE journal, Optical Engineering. He leaves his wife, two children and five grandchildren.

For more information, visit: www.ukiva.org