Human beings observe and understand the world through naked eyes, and machines need to be equipped with a pair of "eyes" to perceive the world, and the machine vision inspection system uses machines instead of human eyes to make various measurements and judgments.
In the 1950s, image processing became an inspection item in the machinery industry, and visual inspection was born as a production inspection mechanism; in the 1990s, the emergence of smart cameras led to the rapid development of visual inspection technology; in 2000, the invention and popularization of digital cameras made Old fashioned frame grabbing cameras are out...
With the continuous development of artificial intelligence technology and the continuous expansion of automation requirements, machine vision is integrated into various industrial scenarios in various ways. With the development of intelligence and digitization, machine vision continues to "break the circle", and has become the object of attention and key investment of global technology giants.
Recently, "Deep Vision", a provider of high-precision intelligent visual inspection solutions in the industrial field, announced the completion of a round A financing of over 100 million yuan. This round of financing was led by General Technology Venture Capital, Huiyou Capital, Zhongguancun Development Qihang Investment, Qualcomm Ventures Follow up.
In fact, starting from 2022, there have been machine vision manufacturers that have successively obtained financing, including landmark technology, moment vision intelligence, Geling deep pupil, Linghu intelligence and other manufacturers, and the financing amount is basically above 10 million, or even over 100 million Yuan-level financing is no longer a minority.
Today, deep vision's high financing seems to indicate that the potential of this industry is being released.
Low-key rising depth vision
Deep Vision was established in 2017. Judging from this time period, it coincides with the development of the domestic artificial intelligence market and the timing of the digital transformation of industrial manufacturing.
According to the statistics of Markets and Markets, a foreign research organization, from 2011 to 2017, the global machine vision market continued to grow, and in 2017 it exceeded 8 billion US dollars. A research report pointed out that from 2011 to 2017, the market size of my country's machine vision industry increased from 1.08 billion yuan to 8 billion yuan, with an average annual compound growth rate of nearly 40%.
Made in China is transforming and upgrading from a "manufacturing country" to a "manufacturing power". Artificial intelligence and machine vision, as the core technologies to realize Made in China 2025, are at the cusp of the manufacturing industry. More and more modern industrial manufacturers are using computer vision Technology, check industrial product problems, improve quality.
Especially in some dangerous working environments that are not suitable for manual work or where artificial vision is difficult to meet the requirements, machine vision is often used to replace artificial vision. High, using machine vision inspection methods can greatly improve production efficiency and production automation.
As a supplier of high-precision intelligent visual inspection solutions in the industrial field, Deep Vision has independent research and development capabilities of smart AI cameras & 3D cameras, optical design capabilities, research and development capabilities of multiple algorithm libraries, research and development capabilities and automation of FPGA platform image acquisition and processing systems The design and manufacturing capabilities of equipment, and its integrated testing equipment have been used in many industrial segments.
Technically, Deep Vision has carried out the product layout of image acquisition-data analysis-equipment integration. At the level of image acquisition, Deep Vision has designed a special light source and optical path, as well as the design of the optical lens group, which solves the overexposure problem caused by the high reflection on the surface of metal parts. At the same time, through the combination of bright field and dark field, it meets the requirements of The image capture requirements for machined parts and special positions of auto parts are met.
At the level of data analysis, unlike traditional visual inspection equipment that relies on industrial computers for centralized computing, Deep Vision adopts a distributed computing method. The advantage of this is that the computing power of the entire device can be better distributed and completed in The target is detected multiple times under different lighting conditions to improve the detection accuracy.
At present, Deep Vision has more than 300 customers, including Schaeffler Group, Fujitsu, Renben Group, Wuzhou New Year and other well-known domestic and foreign enterprises. The annual shipment of products is nearly 1,000 units, and all of them are direct sales channels, which can enable Deep Vision to better understand customer needs and quickly iterate products. In addition, Deep Vision is also building its own production base.
Since its establishment, Deepin Vision has also repeatedly received capital attention. According to the data from Tianyancha, Deep Vision has received 4 rounds of financing so far. Many well-known institutions such as General Venture Capital, Huiyou Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, and Sequoia Fund have raised funds. Among them, the latest round of financing exceeded 100 million yuan .
However, with the participation of more and more new entrants and potential competitors, the transition of the entire market from the blue ocean to the red ocean is gradually intensifying, and Deep Vision and the entire industry are also facing some uncertain challenges.
Will industrial visual inspection become the next focus of "new infrastructure"?
As an important sensing part of industrial production line machinery and equipment, in the upgrading of Industry 4.0 in recent years, the industrialization of industrial vision technology as one of the core technology units has progressed rapidly. It is currently accelerating its penetration in multiple manufacturing industries, and the scale of the entire industrial chain is also accelerating. The case of expansion.
According to GGII data, with the wide application of machine vision technology in the industrial field, it is estimated that by 2023 my country's machine vision market will reach 20.86 billion yuan, of which 3D vision market will reach 3.428 billion yuan; The market size will exceed 10 billion yuan.
When the workshop gradually realizes the optimization and leaning of the production process, industrial inspection has become a must for large factories. The giants all entered the market with their deep learning capabilities honed for a long time, hoping to use their advanced technologies in the stock and incremental markets.
In China's industrial quality inspection market, Baidu Smart Cloud occupies the largest share, providing fixed-point defect detection in the 3C industry (such as Ningde era battery quality inspection), medium and thick plate inspection in the steel industry, and intelligent cloth inspection in the textile industry. corresponding solution.
Ali's industrial brain "Vision" has been applied in many fields such as cell defect detection, silk defect detection, road crack detection, garbage classification, intelligent farming, etc. Tencent also carries some industrial visual intelligence capabilities accumulated in Huaxing Optoelectronics and Airbus, In-depth other manufacturing areas.
As intelligent manufacturing and precision machining put forward requirements for production standards, industrial vision is also facing more stringent tests. These changes have opened up the application scenarios of industrial vision and accelerated its widespread implementation in the manufacturing industry.
However, due to the wide variety of industries and different technical barriers and scenarios, most manufacturers basically start from a certain vertical field, with limited hardware technical capabilities. The rising AI technology can meet some high-precision detection requirements, to a certain extent. However, for manufacturers such as Deep Vision, there are still certain problems in the development of industrial visual inspection.
In the current visual inspection market, participating manufacturers are all engaging in price introversion, whether it is for later financing or to seize the market, it will damage the market order to a certain extent, and the user experience at low prices cannot be guaranteed. For potential seed customers, one of the obstacles affecting their automation transformation is the consideration of cost.
For some manufacturers who need to purchase products, the demand for products in the early stage is relatively small, and it is impossible to share product costs through marginal benefits. A large part of potential users in the market are sensitive to prices and supply chains, and are in the early stages of development. It is difficult for industrial visual inspection products to move the market.
The demand for customized production lines in various industries makes the equipment non-standard and poor in versatility. For factories, different business scenarios, production links, and even different factories have different needs. In the manufacturing process, there are many varieties, Small batches affect the difficulty of enterprise transformation. After the equipment is delivered, it needs to go through a period of debugging before it can finally be adapted to the production line. There is a certain cycle that affects the enthusiasm of enterprises for automation transformation.
Looking at the present, as the trend of digital and intelligent transformation of the manufacturing industry has become a clear direction, the digital transformation of production processes including supply chains and production chains has also become a general direction in the future, and industrial visual inspection has gradually become an essential for manufacturing companies. part of the
As a deep vision that has been deeply involved in the field of industrial visual inspection in the manufacturing industry for many years, it may be able to enjoy the dividends brought by the market under this wave of industrial upgrading. At the same time, industrial visual inspection will also empower the manufacturing industry to upgrade under the general trend .
Source: New Industry Insights