In this episode of Manufacturing Matters, Andrea Van Landingham, VP of Business Development at Theia Technologies, joined TECH B2B Marketing’s Jimmy Carroll at the 2024 A3 Business Forum to talk about how a lens company adapts to changes and shifts in the machine vision market. Topics include matching optics to pixel sizes, evolving vision-guided robotics applications, life sciences applications, deep learning, and more

Jimmy Carroll: [00:00:06] Hi everybody. My name is Jimmy Carroll. I’m the vice president of operations at Tech B2B Marketing here at the Manufacturing Matters podcast at the A3 Business Forum in Orlando. I have the pleasure of being joined by Andrea Van Landingham of Theia Technologies. Andrea, thanks so much for taking the time today. I appreciate it.

Andrea Van Landingham: [00:00:23] Thanks for having me, Jimmy.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:00:25] Of course. So for those who don’t know, if you could give us a little bit of a background of what Theia does and what you do there, that might be helpful.

Andrea Van Landingham: [00:00:32] Sure. So we were started in 2006 to bring a patented technology to market. And that technology is an ultra-wide-angle lens without distortion. Since that time, we’ve developed a number of other technologies suited to the machine vision, robotics, and automation industry, as well as ITS and security markets. And my role is business development, marketing, and sales for the company.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:00:57] So I want to touch on some of those topics that you mentioned there. But one of the things that I think about with optics companies and I’ve written about at length and you’ve kind of seen in the industry publications is this idea of evolving image sensors. So pixel sizes are getting smaller, image sensor resolutions are getting larger. There are developments like SWIR and polarization and things like that. How does Theia go about responding to the evolving image sensor market?

Andrea Van Landingham: [00:01:27] Yeah, that’s a great question. That’s a challenge certainly for all of the component manufacturers in the industry to keep up with the changes. And we as a small company are very careful about the development projects that we enter into. So we study the market, look to find areas where we believe that we can add value. We want to make sure that we are offering something a little bit different or unique in the industry so that we’re not competing head to head with a lot of other manufacturers, like Chinese optics companies, for example. But we do study the market, as I mentioned, and look for lenses that could benefit from our core technologies, our ultra-wide-angle lens technology, our motorized lens technology. We look at the sensor size, we look at the pixel size. And our goal, of course, is to match optics to those sensors and those pixel sizes, as well as looking at the spectra, the light spectra that are being used. And if we have a technology that’s already suitable or if we can develop one in a relatively short period of time to meet the needs of the market.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:02:49] So I want to get a little more granular there. So robotics applications continue to evolve, obviously. There’s so many different types of robots now, from the large ones you see in automotive manufacturing to smaller ones like cobots, and now not every robot has a vision system, but adding a vision system to a robot creates a much more flexible system with many more capabilities. And so as a result obviously a lot of the robots deployed today have vision in them. How do you go about matching optics to these vision systems? Because there’s so many different types of applications in the robotics space. Do you respond directly to customer inquiry? Do you get out ahead and say: People are going to need this type of optics. How do you go about designing optics for robotics?

Andrea Van Landingham: [00:03:38] Yeah. So I guess we would say that we respond both reactively and proactively. So we’ll study the market and see where we believe there might be holes in the market, again, where we could add some value. We also are looking all the time at the customer inquiries and seeing what seems to be trending. For example, with robotics, if they have a mobile robot, for example, they need to have the ability to, in real time, adjust the field of view or adjust the focus. So those are things that we look for. We look at especially the sensor size and the working distance and the pixel size. We have a great tool that we offer to our customers, to anyone actually, on our website called our Image Resolution Simulator and Lens Calculator. So that’s a tool that allows a user to input their own situation variables. And then it will calculate for you the resulting field of view and resulting image resolution, so that you can quickly see if you have the right lens, the right optic, the right field of view, the right resolution for your application. So it’s great. It’s free. So those are some things that we do typically to respond to the market.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:05:00] Very cool. So you mentioned mobile robots, and I wanted to ask about that. Market intelligence company Interact Analysis predicts modest growth for warehouse automation in 2024. But in the coming years, double-digit growth. So warehouse automation encompasses a lot of different types of technologies obviously. But one growing area there is AMRs. Autonomous mobile robots. So there’s a unique need here. So AMRs, they require vision systems for navigation and for safety. How do you go about — obviously you mentioned autofocus and things like that — but what are some of the unique needs? How do you go about designing optics for those types of robots?

Andrea Van Landingham: [00:05:40] Well, I think we’re well suited, well positioned today in the industry already. Those types of applications require situational awareness and navigation. For example, we have our patented technology that provides the ultra-wide field of view without distortion. And we do that without any sort of software corrections. So it’s immediately available. The image is available without any sort of intervention and image processing. It’s just real time without latency. So that’s nice technology already available in the market. In addition to that, we have developed a line of very high-performance, high-resolution lenses that are motorized. They have motorized zoom and focus. So when an AMR is mobile it needs to be able to adjust in real time the field of view, sometimes, in some cases, and the focus as well. So that’s what our lenses were designed to do. High performance in both the visible spectrum and near IR so that they are able to be used in multi-sectoral applications, for example. It could be for things such as looking at crop health or human tissue health, for example. Those are some of the technologies that we have at our disposal today. And we’re always looking at what we can do to adjust or modify those to suit the needs today and tomorrow.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:07:11] It’s interesting. So you mentioned agricultural imaging, and it’s sort of the idea of machine vision going beyond the factory floor. What are some general trends or predictions you might have in terms of the adoption of vision in general? But beyond the factory floor, you mentioned things like agricultural imaging, and it’s this idea of — I’ve kind of talked about it in some of the articles I’ve written, and you’ve seen it in different articles out there in the space — but the general idea of machine vision moving beyond the factory floor. In the general automation space, do you have any trends or predictions that you expect to see in the coming years? For example, have you seen any increased interest from customers from a certain segment that’s particularly interesting? Or is it kind of more of the same?

Andrea Van Landingham: [00:07:57] I would say that we have a continual flow of inquiries from general automation and robotics, but we also have been seeing some really interesting applications in the medical area and also in the life sciences area. So we expect those are going to be areas that are going to grow. And certainly when you’re talking about artificial intelligence and machine learning, having a great image and repeating great images is going to help those systems learn as they go. So having a real high-performance optic is where we believe we’re going to fit the best.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:08:35] So I’m actually glad that you brought up AI. It wasn’t on my agenda necessarily, but it’s a good point. There are some application-specific or purpose-built systems out there now for AI and deep learning. Some of them will even claim that you don’t necessarily need adequate lighting or whatever, but you still need good images for AI, and that requires lighting and that requires high-quality lenses. And that’s just the fact.

Andrea Van Landingham: [00:09:05] Yeah, you need to have the appropriate level of definition in the image. So you’re always going to be looking at whether or not your optic has an ability to resolve a pixel that’s being used in that application on that camera. And that’s not an easy thing to do. It’s not easy to design those optics, but we’ve been able to do some really great things. So I think we’re in a great position to respond to a lot of the needs of this market.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:09:34] Andrea, anything else that we haven’t talked about that you want to talk about today. For example, what’s Theia really excited about? What other shows are you going to? What’s 2024 looking like for you guys?

Andrea Van Landingham: [00:09:47] Well, we are excited for the year. I think one of the things that we’re excited to see are a lot of responses from projects that had been delayed. A lot of companies seem to have been building up inventory. So we’ve seen a lot of that latent demand come back. And we’re starting off the year with a big bang in that regard. So that’s very nice. Other shows that we’re participating in. Certainly our ITS market is a strong sector for us, traffic systems, so we’re going to be heading out to Intertraffic in Amsterdam in April, as well as some of the shows. Stuttgart, of course, in October. So we’ll be participating in all of those.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:10:34] That’s great. Well, Andrea, thank you so much for taking the time today. It’s been a pleasure. I hope that you enjoy your first A3 Business Forum, right?

Andrea Van Landingham: [00:10:40] Yes, this is my first. So I’m excited to be here. Yeah, it’ll be great.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:10:44] Great. And thank you.

Andrea Van Landingham: [00:10:45] Thanks a lot.