Machine Vision Insights from Industry Experts on Three Decades of Progress Key Highlights - Machine vision has evolved from proprietary, expensive components to standardized, affordable solutions driven by advances in CMOS sensors and imaging protocols. - Key technological milestones include the rise of CMOS cameras, LED lighting, SWIR imaging, and the integration of AI, transforming automated inspection and industrial applications. - Experts predict continued hardware commoditization, smarter systems with on-the-job learning, and broader adoption of SWIR imaging fueled by AI and emerging sensor technologies. Vision Systems Design is celebrating a major milestone in 2026: 30 years of covering the machine vision and imaging industry. VSD began as a spin-off of sister publication Laser Focus World. While machine vision may seem like a specialty market to some, it is in fact a robust, growing, multi-billion-dollar industry that clearly merits a publication dedicated exclusively to its coverage. Still, 30 years is a long time, and too often the present can seem a little slow—even static—until it becomes the past. A quick AI search will instantly generate a reasonably accurate timeline of machine vision’s evolution. In brief, research into image processing and pattern recognition—the foundations of applications such as automated inspection—began in the 1950s and 1960s. Industrial adoption accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s, while neural networks and deep learning expanded machine vision’s capabilities by 2010. Today, AI-powered platforms continue to push applications to new levels. Such an exercise is helpful, if for no other reason than it illustrates that the sheer power, not to mention convenience, of technology has advanced, almost unimaginably so, from just a few years ago. But a much more interesting exercise is to see the past, present, and future through the knowledgeable eyes, deep experience, and informed viewpoint of people who have seen the timeline unfold—first person and