North American sales of machine vision (MV) components and systems that provide vision intelligence to robots and other machines declined in the first quarter of 2019, a reduction of 4.5% over the same period last year.

The statistics were compiled by AIA, the industry’s trade group part of the Association for Advancing Automation (A3), and showed that financial transactions for the entire market declined to $674 million, with sales of MV components down 12.6% to $93 million, and sales of MV systems down 3.1% to $579 million.

Alex Shikany, vice president of membership and business intelligence at A3, said the drop in sales was expected based on feedback from member companies.

“The semiconductor industry, which is a leading indicator for machine vision, showed signs of contraction at the end of last year, which led us to believe lower sales figures might’ve been ahead to begin 2019,” he said. “Fortunately, machine vision technologies are still becoming smarter and smaller to fit within in-demand automation applications such as AI-driven bin picking, autonomous vehicles, and advanced inspection technologies, which is a positive indicator for the future health of this industry.”

AIA officials have mixed expectations for future sales of MV components based on a survey of industry professionals. The survey revealed that 41% of experts believe component sales in total will increase, 39% believe they will remain flat, and 21% expect further declines.

In addition, for MV systems markets, the survey showed that 71% of respondents are expecting flat performance, 23% are expecting increases, and only 6% are preparing for declines. Overall, two-thirds (66%) of respondents believe the MV market in North America will remain flat in the next six months.