A Look at Future for One Robot
Machine vision, robotic vision, automated vision . . .
No matter which catch-phrase is used, the business of making machines that “see” objects for the purposes of industrial inspection or analysis has proven difficult to prosper in.
From corporate behemoths such as General Motors to relative pipsqueaks such as San Diego-based IRT Corp. and Monitor Technologies, scores of companies have spent millions of dollars and man-hours trying to develop computerized systems that perform the same tasks as the human eye, only faster and more efficiently.
For a variety of technical reasons, many of those products have either taken much longer to bring on line than expected or ended up as costly failures. In 1986, General Motors scaled back an ambitious plan to install robotic vision systems in its car plants. Also in 1986, Monitor Technologies of San Diego closed down an automated vision product line, taking a $2.2-million write-off.
Venture Capitalists Cool
IRT Corp. has lost millions in efforts to develop automated inspection systems for circuit boards, automotive wheels and other products, losses that have helped bring the Torrey Pines-based company to the brink of insolvency.
Because of these and other setbacks, the growth rate of the machine vision industry has been considerably slower than was projected at the beginning of the decade. And most venture capitalists, to say the least, are cool to the idea of investing in machine vision enterprises.
Against this backdrop of disappointment and failure stands a small, seven-employee San Diego company called American Innovision that is trying to beat the odds. Founded in 1982 by former Duke University research biologist Jose Torre-Bueno, the company is one of a new generation of machine vision companies that is giving industry observers cause for renewed optimism.
American Innovision differs from its competitors in that its systems can capture, analyze and reproduce color video images instead of the typical black and white pictures. Having sold its systems to researchers since early 1987, American Innovision just shipped its first industrial product to Johnson & Johnson’s Ortho Pharmaceuticals unit in Raritan, N.J.
Called the I150, the American Innovision system is a quality control system for packaging of birth control pills.
“Ortho makes ‘tri-phasic’ oral contraceptives, with different pills with different colors for each stage of a woman’s monthly cycle,” Johnson & Johnson project engineer Kenneth Baker said. “To the naked eye, it’s hard to tell the pills apart.”
“Our charter to AI was to (make a system to) determine the color of the tablets to make sure we had the right colored one in the right place in the package. If we don’t, it means pregnancy and lawsuits.”
Johnson & Johnson had tried out 14 robotic vision systems before coming across the American Innovision system at a trade show earlier this year, Torre-Bueno said. Although Johnson & Johnson will not put the product on line until tomorrow, Baker said that the machine has performed well in tests. “Thus far, we are extremely impressed with the product,” Baker said.
Nominated for Award
The I150 American Innovision system can inspect up to 100 tablets every two seconds and “think” or inspect pills in real time. J&J; ordered six of the systems at more than $70,000 each.
If successful, the Johnson & Johnson system will almost certainly lead to word-of-mouth sales of many more I150 systems, possibly as many as 36, to other pharmaceutical companies in 1989, Torre-Bueno said. American Innovision projects that its sales next year will reach $3 million, up from $1 million anticipated for 1988.
The product is one of nine developed by San Diego-area companies to be nominated for three “Most Innovative New Product of 1988” awards to be given out by UC San Diego’s Connect entrepreneur program Dec. 6.
The company hopes the sale to Johnson & Johnson will make it easier for it to raise capital to develop other products, including inspection systems for medical supplies and labeling as well as diagnostic systems for medical pathologists.
So far, however, venture capitalists have given American Innovision the cold shoulder. The company has financed its operations “on a shoestring” through federal Small Business Innovative Research grants totaling $1.7 million.
Researchers Like It
American Innovision has had several of its V150 color image analysis systems for medical researchers up and working for more than one year. With its color video monitor, the V150 enables researchers to analyze and create three-dimensional color reconstructions of microscopic images on color monitors.
Paul Goldsmith, an associate professor at UC San Francisco medical school, said the V150 system has facilitated his study of nerve cells within the brains of experimental animals by allowing him to take detailed “windows” of a microscopic images and analyze them separately.
Joel Kirkpatrick, a professor of pathology at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, uses the V150 for his research on Alzheimer’s Disease. “It takes pretty pictures (of microscopic images) but it also gives quantitative information about what it sees--how many, how large and how dense the cells or parts of cells are. I use it to count nerve fibers,” Kirkpatrick said.
A Critical Step
Torre-Bueno moved his company to San Diego from North Carolina in 1984 because the area was filled with biotechnology companies, the primary market for the V150.
