Amphenol LTW provides connectors for industrial automation and machine vision, horticultural lighting, LED lighting and display, fishing light and other markets. Under the influence of COVID-19, the industrial automation and machine vision markets are still making remarkable progress. LEDinside had the honor to interview Charles Wu, the Global BD of Amphenol LTW, to share with us Amphenol LTW solutions for machine vision applications in industrial automation.

(image: Amphenol LTW)

Charles Indicated that, due to the impact of COVID-19, the growth of the industrial automation market is not as expected, indeed. Most manufacturers have postponed their original development plans, considering to reserve the resource. However, some manufacturers still increase their budget to develop industrial automation, considering of the future manpower shortages. Charles indicated that the first half of 2021 will still be affected by COVID-19, however, the expecting increasing demand will be from the 2nd half of 2021. Europe and North America markets may have a big jump in 2021.

Industrial manufacture is complex and requires a lot of detailed design. The concept of mass production in traditional assembly lines will to be innovated after the robotics and machine vision development. Recently, the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning technology has substantially leveled up on the demand for industrial automation. With robotic arms and machine vision, deep learning can provide automatic object recognition to achieve product monitoring and quality management. Optical machine vision is mainly used for 3D object recognition or precious inspection. There are many successful cases at this stage. Among them, a leading Japanese automation provider adopts Amphenol LTW hybrid connectors (transmission of data and power) to link with machine vision camera, so that the optical camera machine can quickly and accurately provide data.

LiDAR is also used as optical machine vision, especially in the industrial inspection providing 3D recognition, measurement, and automated guided vehicles (AGV), both are Amphenol LTW long-term strategical development market. Those markets have higher standard on high-speed transmission and anti-vibration. Mainstream of requirement on the transmission speed is Cat 5/5e. Amphenol LTW current product series can meet not only the mainstream but also the next generation, Cat. 6/6A (transmission speed 10 Gbit/s).

(image: Amphenol LTW)

In addition to the factory automation, Charles pointed out that there is a special success case in 2020, Amphenol LTW has cooperated with the world famous coffee brand to install infrared machine vision in ovens to observe the baking process which can provide the food at the best timing. In this case, Amphenol LTW provided the metal M-series connectors which can meet the high temperature and corrosion resistance.

Finally, Charles indicated the connector itself is mainly to combine power and data. Its market requirements include smaller in size, fast in transmission speed, anti-EMI with metal protection, quick plug, and anti-vibration, Fast (Fast, Anti-vibration, Shielding-EMI, Tiny) is just the product development principle of Amphenol LTW.
 

Author Joanne / TrendForce Research Manager

2020 Infrared Sensing Application Market Trend- Mobile 3D Sensing, LiDAR and Driver Monitoring System
Release Date: 01 January 2020
Language: Traditional Chinese / English
Page: 153