Automatix
| Company type | Public |
|---|---|
| Industry | Industrial robotics, Machine vision |
| Founded | January 1980 |
| Founder | Victor Scheinman, Phillippe Villers, Michael Cronin, Arnold Reinhold, Jake Dias, Dan Nigro, Gordon VanderBrug, Donald L. Pieper, Norman Wittels |
| Products | Autovision machine vision platforms, Robovision robot, Cybervision system, AID-600 Cartesian robot, Seamtracker vision-guided welding robot, RobotWorld modular robots |
Automatix Inc., established in January 1980, was a pioneer in introducing industrial robots equipped with integrated machine vision to the market. The company’s founders comprised notable figures such as Victor Scheinman, creator of the Stanford arm; Phillippe Villers, Michael Cronin, and Arnold Reinhold from Computervision; Jake Dias and Dan Nigro representing Data General; Gordon VanderBrug from NBS; Donald L. Pieper of General Electric; and Norman Wittels affiliated with Clark University.
Products
Among its earliest offerings were the Autovision machine vision platform, the Robovision robot designed for welding, and the Cybervision system for electronic parts assembly. Automatix was an early adopter of the Motorola 68000 microprocessor but due to software constraints, it developed a proprietary operating system along with a robotics scripting language named "RAIL." Initially, the company licensed early machine vision technology from Stanford Research Institute, which was later superseded by Apple Macintosh II computers during the late 1980s.
Robot mechanisms were initially procured from Hitachi, followed by sourcing from Yaskawa and KUKA. Automatix engineered and produced the AID-600 Cartesian robot, primarily intended for precision assembly tasks but modified for highly accurate Tungsten inert gas welding (TIG), demonstrating robustness against electromagnetic disturbances. The company introduced the Seamtracker, the first vision-guided welding robot on the market, which utilized structured laser illumination combined with monochromatic filters to function effectively despite welding arcs. Another significant advancement by Scheinman was RobotWorld, a modular system consisting of compact robots suspended on a two-dimensional linear motor grid designed for collaborative assembly operations; this product line was eventually acquired by Yaskawa.
Machine vision systems
Throughout its development, Automatix created several machine vision platforms:
- Autovision I (1981) focused on rapid deployment and utilized Vision Module technology licensed from Stanford Research Institute. It incorporated an early prototype of the Motorola 68000 KDM board interfaced with a Unibus frame grabber from SRI, tailored for use with the General Electric TN-2200 solid-state video camera featuring a 128x128 pixel sensor.
- Autovision II (1982) employed a custom-built Versabus 68000 processor complemented by an 8-channel RS-170 Versabus frame grabber utilizing an AMD Am2900 bit slice micro-controller, all enclosed within a durable NEMA-12 rated casing.
- Autovision IV closely resembled AV II but incorporated a patented frame grabber design using dual 68000 processors and replaced DECtape storage with Sony -inch floppy disk drives.
- AV 5 maintained the electronic architecture of AV IV but was housed in a standard rack mount chassis.
- AI 90 (1987) repurposed an Apple Macintosh II into an industrial rack mount format running RAIL ported to Mac OS (MacRAIL), publicly introduced at the MacWorld Expo in Boston.
- Autovision 90 utilized an Apple Quadra 950 configured within a rack mount enclosure.
- Image Analyst was a Macintosh-based software solution built upon MacRAIL.
The AI-32 robot controller developed by Automatix shared identical processor architecture, bus systems, and the RAIL scripting language with Autovision II, IV, and V models. This allowed seamless integration of frame grabber hardware and processing units for unified machine vision and robotic control functions.
Corporate developments and mergers
Automatix attracted significant venture capital funding and went public in 1983, although it did not achieve profitability until the early 1990s. In 1994, it combined operations with machine vision specialist Itran Corp., resulting in the creation of Acuity Imaging, Inc. The following year, in September 1995, Robotics Vision Systems Inc. (RVSI) acquired Acuity. By 2004, RVSI was marketing the advanced Automatix machine vision product range under the PowerVision brand.
In August 2005, Siemens Energy and Automation purchased RVSI. By mid-2008, Siemens offered the RVSI Visionscape and Hawkeye product lines alongside its SIMATIC series—some of which were rebranded versions of smart cameras originally developed by DVT/Cognex. In September 2008, Microscan Systems, Inc., headquartered in Renton, Washington, acquired Siemens' Machine Vision division, including the Visionscape and Hawkeye products.
As of August 2016, Automatix’s Powervision system was still accessible through RPC Machine Vision Systems, a value-added reseller for Microscan products. Later, in December 2017, Omron Corporation acquired Microscan, incorporating its MicroHawk and Visionscape lines into Omron’s worldwide distribution framework.