Biophotonics, when applied to medical imaging or robotic surgery, significantly advances healthcare by offering a multifaceted approach to diagnosis, treatment, and surgery while improving patient care and outcomes.

Using 2D or 3D vision to guide robots can improve flexibility and lower costs in various industrial applications. With the rise of collaborative robots, also known as cobots, there are now more opportunities to integrate machine vision into the work environment.

​The Advancing Photonics Technologies collaboration is one of more than 40 teams across the nation selected to receive one of the first-ever NSF Engines Development Awards, which provide up to two years of funding toward the planning of a multistate initiative to create economic, societal, and technological opportunities for their regions.

Environmental sensors, spurred on by the rapidly developing Internet of Things, are becoming better at evaluating soil chemical composition, water purity, air quality, and more. They are also being used in more unique ways, both personally and by industry.

Over the past 68 years, SPIE has been connecting, engaging, and serving its global constituency of more than 258,000 people from 184 countries. A big part of meeting that mission is accomplished by hosting conferences and exhibitions and, at the end of the month, SPIE will be hosting a big one: The Defense + Commercial Sensing conference and exhibition.

On the last day of Photonics West 2022, Jim Sullivan with Schneider Optics introduced the JADE series – a family of lenses designed for an image diagonal of 19.3 mm and optimized for machine vision applications.

The Machine Vision RV-Series from Canon is made up of a group of systems that are specifically designed to work as the “eyes” of robotic arm systems. Benefits for using these machine vision systems include one-time measurements of 3D pose, high-speed recognition, improved productivity, and reduced production costs. This series is ideal for use in industrial production applications such as automobile parts manufacturing, car manufacturing, and electronics manufacturing.

The RV1100 is a 3D machine vision system designed to measure and recognize randomly assembled production line parts with complex shapes and very few distinguishing features for robotic arm systems. It offers the benefits of one-time measurements of 3D pose, high-speed recognition, improved productivity, and reduced production costs. The RV1100 is ideal for use in industrial production applications such as automobile parts manufacturing, car manufacturing, and electronics manufacturing.

This year at Photonics West, Jason Palidwar with Iridian Spectral Technologies gave us insight into the three optical filtering solutions his company is focusing on in 2016.

Dylan Thomas, Texas Instruments DLP, introduces us to a highly accurate light steering development platform with high brightness and resolution ideal for a variety of industrial, medical, and scientific applications.