Summary
- Profile Type
- Technology offer
- POD Reference
- TOBG20230815005
- Term of Validity
- 15 August 2023 - 14 August 2025
- Company's Country
- Bulgaria
- Type of partnership
- Research and development cooperation agreement
- Targeted Countries
- All countries
Contact the EEN partner nearest to you for more information.
Find my local partner
General information
- Short Summary
- Bulgarian company working in the domain of advanced engineering offers its know-how & expertise in the development of solutions for automation of visual quality inspection processes under research & development agreement. Its end-to-end services include both mechanical and software engineering for the machine design and AI/machine learning algorithms development for all serial production industries (automotive, food processing, etc.), as well as for new fields like microbiology, medicine, etc.
- Full Description
-
The company at hand resides in Sofia, Bulgaria and specializes in advanced engineering project execution, offering state-of-the-art solutions to automate visual quality inspection processes across diverse manufacturing settings. As an integrator of mechanical and software engineering expertise, the company excels in creating sophisticated and yet economically efficient machines for automated visual quality inspection.
The process begins with the development of tailored automation hardware concepts, ensuring seamless integration in the manufacturing line of the customer, efficient parts handling, and precise image capturing of inspected products. Leveraging AI and machine learning, the company's software algorithms analyze these images with exceptional accuracy, detecting defects with high precision. In order to achieve this precision, the company specializes in performance of feasibility studies and experiments to choose the right machine vision components – the combination of camera(s)/lens(es)/light(s) and software algorithms is different for every problem, so that the most optimal solution can be found.
The state of the art in the field of visual inspection automation is very chaotic and fragmented – there are multiple companies producing machine vision hardware for industrial image acquisition and multiple software companies that develop AI and machine learning enhanced algorithms for image analysis. However, just the direct of combination of these two elements is not enough to achieve an end-to-end automation – the project team needs to also take care of parts handling, positioning, capturing and disposal in OK and NOK scenarios. Furthermore, different industries are differently interested in investing in such solutions and therefore similar problems are for example well studied and solved in automotive, while completely undiscovered in other industries like construction materials production or food processing.
The company at hand is taking the leading role in developing and providing a ready-to-use platform/ecosystem to help companies from all industries to deploy both machine vision hardware and software into working real-life solutions. The features of such platform include use case development, choice of specific hardware and software combinations, computer vision machines and modules development and implementation in all industries related to serial production – automotive, microelectronics, food processing, construction materials, metal, and wood manufacturing. Furthermore, a fruitful collaboration can be realized with machine manufacturing companies, which want to explore the area of machine vision for additional quality control features of their machines.
The company acts as technology integrator for the world’s leading producer of machine vision hardware and software – Cognex Corporation (US). It has successfully completed projects using their equipment and advising and helping manufacturing companies in Bulgaria to implement them. At the same time, it is currently in the process of offering multiple projects for machine vision implementation to manufacturing companies in Romania, Malaysia and China.
The company at hand can act as research and development partner for the development of novel image analysis solutions: In case that an R&D consortium/organization or any equipment manufacturer is looking to deploy image analysis concepts and solutions in new application fields like microbiology, medicine, manufacturing and similar, the company at hand can support the R&D activities with its expertise in machine vision hardware and software development using AI and machine learning. Different scenarios are possible, for example like work package leader or team member. - Advantages and Innovations
-
The main advantage of the company’s service offering lies in the ability to completely execute end-to-end a project for automation of visual quality inspection processes or modules in any industry. This process is usually either skipped or completely manually performed by an operator by handling the products with hands and no images for image analysis are available. Thus, a successful automation requires first a suitable automation concept to ensure parts are automatically collected from the previous process, automatically inspected, and rejected parts are removed from the process, while OK parts are automatically transferred to the next operations. In order to achieve this, both mechanical engineering and software engineering knowledge is applied for the machine design and requirements of the AI/machine learning algorithms are considered from the earliest stage of the development.
This approach guarantees to the partner organization, that the complex visual inspection processes will be automated in a way that no critical defects will remain hidden. At the same time, the quality of the products will be 100% independent of human factors and the inspection will be more robust and controllable.
When considering research cooperation and novel solutions development – the project will benefit from the company’s experience and expertise in implementation of industry-relevant solutions and perspectives about go-to-market methods in research activities. The main expertise will be in development of industry relevant AI/machine learning software algorithms for image analysis and insights generation from image/video files. - Stage of Development
- Already on the market
- Sustainable Development Goals
- Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production
- Goal 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
- IPR status
- IPR applied but not yet granted
Partner Sought
- Expected Role of a Partner
-
The type of partner sought is any organization (profit or non-profit), which is interested in developing and deploying novel methods and solutions in the area of machine vision. The company at hand brings years of experience in development and implementation of end-to-end solutions for visual quality inspection automation in serial production operations in different industries. Thus, the partner sought can on the first place bring the problem that needs to be solved using development and implementation of novel AI/machine learning algorithms for it. Second, the partner can help with improving the already available algorithms of the company for the application of the main application field – automation of quality inspection processes at multiple companies. As a summary, the following roles of partner can be considered:
- use case creation for visual quality inspection automation;
- provision of machine vision hardware and collaboration in all areas of the development: from concept design up to serial production;
- provision of machine vision software: from development of novel AI/machine learning algorithms up to benchmarking towards industrial problems. - Type and Size of Partner
- University
- SME 50 - 249
- SME 11-49
- R&D Institution
- SME <=10
- Type of partnership
- Research and development cooperation agreement
Dissemination
- Technology keywords
- 01003003 - Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- 02003001 - Process automation
- 01003020 - Building Automation Software
- 01003012 - Imaging, Image Processing, Pattern Recognition
- 01001001 - Automation, Robotics Control Systems
- Market keywords
- 08006001 - Process control and logistics
- 08002005 - Machine vision software and systems
- 08002007 - Other industrial automation
- Targeted countries
- All countries