Greg Hollows, VP of product strategy and new product development at Edmund Optics, visits Manufacturing Matters to discuss the future of the optics and lighting markets. Machine vision component suppliers are capitalizing on COVID-era research and development to create solutions – everything from standard products to turnkey systems – that bring together new sensor and optics technologies. Hollows says that customers also are expecting cameras that offer lighter weight, larger sensor sizes, extended wavelengths, ruggedization, and repeatability. Meanwhile, autonomous technology will continue its refinement outside the warehouse, where restaurants are testing self-driving delivery systems, and agriculture is increasing its use of crop-monitoring drones and autonomous tractors that use multiple cameras for 360° obstacle detection.

Winn Hardin: [00:00:01] Good morning, everybody. We’re here on the set of Manufacturing Matters in Boston at the Boston Vision Show. And also we’re co-located with the Autonomous Mobile Robotics and Logistics Show. And today I am lucky enough to be speaking with Greg Hollows, who’s vice president of product strategy and new product development at Edmund Optics, definitely one of the benchmark players within the machine vision and imaging space. So, Greg, thanks for joining us today.

Greg Hollows: [00:00:21] Happy to be here.

Winn Hardin: [00:00:22] I appreciate it. So, as you’ve been walking around the show floor, tell us a little bit about what is exciting and what you’re seeing.

Greg Hollows: [00:00:27] Well, what I’ve been seeing is the advancement of technology. Coming out of COVID, everybody was just happy to be back at events and activities a year, year and a half ago.

Winn Hardin: [00:00:36] Although it has been an extremely busy second half of 2022, in terms of the shows.

Greg Hollows: [00:00:40] Yes, absolutely. But what I’ve been seeing that’s different, you know, people came out of the COVID era and there was a little bit of new tech. People were starting to venture out there. But they were just happy to get their products back in front of people that they had already. What we see now is all the R&D and development. We’re starting to see things come together, new products being launched, more things and deep learning and AI. And there’s just a wider range of things coming out in the camera side that’s going to really help develop the future of the optics and lighting markets.

Winn Hardin: [00:01:07] So as you see these new markets, these new applications that are coming out, how is that affecting Edmund’s either product development or processes? Overall organization?

Greg Hollows: [00:01:15] So from an Edmund point of view, what we’re seeing is needs and demand for things that are lighter weight. We’re seeing bigger sensor sizes. We’re seeing expanded wave band that we’re going to have to deal with. So it’s actually not altering what we’re doing, but it’s additive, because the old technologies aren’t going away. These are all supplemental pieces to the puzzle. But what we have to do is design the products that are going to marry up to the new sensor technology, the new illumination technology to make things go. And that’s a big part of our focus, actually, the last 18 months and through the next three to four years with all these new product families that need to come together.

Winn Hardin: [00:01:47] So does that mean that Edmund is going to be more active in assembly creation for their customers, more camera–optics alignment? How will that change what you’re doing daily?

Greg Hollows: [00:01:57] That’s a really good question. What we’re seeing is there’s a need for sensor technology and optics technology to be brought together. You can do the straightforward thread together or snap together sort of assembly setup, but a lot of these things to actually take advantage of the sensor capabilities that are occurring, you need to be aligning optics and sensors together to maximize performance to get the full capabilities. A lot of cases you have to align the illumination to it as well. My customers have been asking us to do that subsystem for them. So it’s not a final product per se. It’s a piece that goes into another product that people are asking us to do. And it’s really that subassembly and module work that’s becoming a big part of the future developments of that.

Winn Hardin: [00:02:38] So are you going to be more of a turnkey solution provider for some of your customers maybe in the embedded space and consumer products, medical, other?

Greg Hollows: [00:02:45] On a lot of this, it’s about following where our customers want us to go and servicing your needs. So in some cases we’ll be turnkey, some cases it might be some standard product that goes into that space to help them. But it would all be where we’re trying to meet the needs of those emerging customer requirements.

Winn Hardin: [00:02:59] Earlier you mentioned increasing wave bands that we need to be paying attention to outside of the visible spectrum. And we’re all familiar with InGaAs, SWIR. Xenics is doing more long-wave infrared over there. Do you have the quantum dot detectors on your radar? Is that something you think is going to significantly change SWIR? Lower the price point? Expand the market for Sony’s copper SWIR sensor? When you talk about those wave bands, what do you think about?

Greg Hollows: [00:03:25] I think this falls into that emerging technology that I was talking about. Lower cost has always happened with all sensor technology, whether it’s something that’s disruptive, that replaces the existing, or there are ways to get the costs down. We’ve seen that for the last two decades. So it’s all very promising. I think right now what we’re waiting to see is what is going to catch on, because everything has pros and cons. And what’s going to become that dominant thing that will change the cost of that marketplace and make it more affordable outside of just laboratory use or high-end surveillance and security.

Winn Hardin: [00:03:57] Can you give us a couple of those applications that are new to Edmund Optics, perhaps like autonomous, whether it’s in the warehouse or out on the street level. Is that something that Edmund has really got on its radar? And do you see more of the machine vision technology transfer and beyond the factory?

Greg Hollows: [00:04:12] Sure, sure. So you talk about autonomous, whether it’s in the warehouse or in the vehicles, smart delivery systems. I think everybody’s seen commercials for pizza companies that are delivering via autonomous vehicles. So vision is all a part of that. But that and drones being able to look at our food supply, things that are going to enhance mobility, things that are going to enhance efficiency and capabilities. What we’re seeing there is you need something that is going to be lighter weight, is ruggedized, is repeatable, doesn’t have a lot of variation over temperature or vibration or whatever it may be. That stuff backs in to what’s going on in factory. Automation only enhances those spaces. If you take something that’s designed for autonomous vehicle and you want to guarantee it does not move and it points in the same direction all the time, that also helps when you’re building an instrument that’s doing metrology in the factory that you want to guarantee that vibrations or just even delivery doesn’t alter the calibration of the system. Same sort of reorganization requirements in two totally different markets. In the markets that we’re talking about outside are definitely transferring back into the traditional markets we’ve been in for a long time now.

Winn Hardin: [00:05:14] I know there’s a lot of buzz, especially at this show, with autonomous warehouse solutions, of course, and we’re all very excited about the future of autonomous vehicles, mainly car vehicles, passenger vehicles. But a market that’s really engaging and exciting me lately is agriculture. I mean, when is machine vision going to really get out there into the real life?

Greg Hollows: [00:05:33] It’s in there more than you would you would think.

Winn Hardin: [00:05:37] I’m surprised by that.

Greg Hollows: [00:05:38] You know at these trade shows or events and these activities, your traditional agriculture companies are here, they’re wandering around, but they’re not front and center. They don’t have a booth or whatever it may be. And a lot of these companies are enormous companies. So there’s a limited amount of customers. But what we are seeing in the agriculture space — they’re already doing things — you’ll see like the same thing you’ll find in the high-end cars now, where you can see all the way around your vehicle. That’s already happening at some of the big agricultural manufacturers — to be able to go into the fields, in and out of a barn or a storage facility. That’s already happening. Autonomous vehicles are coming into that space. It’s actually an interesting space for this industry because it doesn’t have such high volumes that it moves over into things that are more in the consumer electronics space for manufacturing.

Winn Hardin: [00:06:20] Right.

Greg Hollows: [00:06:21] But what we’re also seeing is new technologies coming out. There’s a company out there that’s using lasers to zap weeds or using a vision system to identify them, and they’re burning them out of the ground with laser. So you’re seeing photonics and imaging getting into the field all the time, people looking in the fields for the health of a plant, the quality of the food before it’s even picked in the field. So they can either leave it behind or know that they have to do something in that area of the field. So this is happening very actively. I just think it’s in the background for a lot of what people think of traditional machine vision.

Winn Hardin: [00:06:51] So does this really represent an opportunity for exponential growth of machine vision technology out in the other space? And as we get down to consumer products, as we get out into the real world, is this going to be a watershed moment?

Greg Hollows: [00:07:01] I see it as a pivoting moment, It’s probably a longer pivot. I don’t think it’s exponential growth. For some people it will be. If you’re lucky enough to win the contracts, to be on a vehicle like we see driving out here, that’s a game changer. And there’s very few of those things that are out there. But when you start talking about agriculture and drones for overseeing a field or looking at infrastructure, like power, gas, things like that, that is going to be a significant growth area. I think what’s beautiful about this is that the machine vision industry, what we think of as traditional factory automation, so much of it is tied to semiconductor, and as you add in these other markets, they help mute the ups and downs of the semiconductor industry, which actually creates more stability for the players in the market, and long term that’s health for the industry.

Winn Hardin: [00:07:46] Are we ready to be able to ramp up that production? Let’s say Edmund Optics gets, you know, the optical elements for the new lidar system in a Volvo, for example. You know, selling millions of units per year. Is that something that we’re ready to respond to?

Greg Hollows: [00:08:00] Yes, I believe so, because when we look at other industries, a lot of that’s glass and metal sensor technology. And what we’ve seen is Sony’s been able to ramp up to do things for Apple. We all know that Sony sells to Apple. And you’re talking hundreds of millions of units. And Apple isn’t even the biggest smartphone manufacturer out there that has cameras in it. You see things for the solar market. You see things for automotive in the glass area. Aluminum and metal are things that are highly available because of other markets. So the ramp-up should not be problematic. You might have some hiccups along the way, but the actual raw material is where the issues would be in that supply is reasonably solid outside of geopolitical issues.

Winn Hardin: [00:08:37] That’s wonderful. That’s fantastic. Greg, I’ve always wanted to ask this one question. It’s a bit of a softball question, but what do you say to people who think that optics is just a commodity? You know that the lens I put on there really isn’t important about the success or failure of my machine vision system or even my new consumer system?

Greg Hollows: [00:08:52] Well, the first thing I would look at is why do they think that.  And you know we’re here on camera today, and it’s because companies like Sony, Nikon, Canon have done such a great job over the years of marrying optics and camera together that people think it is one unit. And that’s what the expectation is in the market. So I don’t see it from an optical side as something that’s upsetting. It’s just a chance to educate and explain, okay, well, why do you think they have this many products? Oh, it’s two different things. Okay. It’s not an accessory. And that’s where you get back into machine vision. It always has to dial in to specifically what you’re trying to do to make your application work the best. And it’s really an educational opportunity. And most people do appreciate that.

Winn Hardin: [00:09:30] And as a community and an industry, I think we’d all like to thank Edmund for taking such a lead role in that outreach and that education over the years. I know that so many of the integrators I speak to, as soon as they get a young engineer in, the first thing they do is sit them down in front of a PC, go up to the Edmund website, and say, “Okay, start learning about MTF, start learning about these key elements in optical and how to use the photon to be successful.

Greg Hollows: [00:09:51] Well, that’s been an enjoyable part for Edmund as a company. It’s one of the nice things about working for a family-owned company. They’re very into engaging the community and developing things. We think of it as a bigger family.

Winn Hardin: [00:10:02] Right.

Greg Hollows: [00:10:02] And that’s why we do it. And it’s really an enjoyable part of the experience of working at the company.

Winn Hardin: [00:10:06] That’s fantastic. That’s fantastic. Next time they’re hiring, let me know. So today, thank you much, Greg Hollows, joining us from Edmund Optics. Really appreciate your time on Manufacturing Matters. If you guys have got any questions for Greg or if you’d like to join us in some future show, we’ll hope you’ll share, like, reach out to us through the website, through LinkedIn, and until we see you next time, bye-bye.