Vitronic executive receives AIA achievement award
Steve Scheiber, Contributing Technical Editor -- Test & Measurement World, 5/1/2005
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| Dr. Stein (left) accepts the 2005 Achievement Award from Jeff Burnstein, executive director of the AIA.Courtesy of AIA. |
The company recently installed more than 300 toll-enforcement systems along German motorways, providing fully automated free-flowing multi-lane enforcement of road-use charges for more than 1 million vehicles every day. Their 3-D shape-recognition capability counts axles, detects trailers, and can recognize license plates from all over Europe. According to Dr. Stein, this same technology can inspect electronic components and boards in high-volume production.
Dr. Stein received his PhD from Technical University Darmstadt in 1984. He founded Vitronic that same year, introducing the bar-code reader in 1986, an equally sophisticated optical character reader (OCR) in 1987, a vision system in 1989, and the first real-time 3-D system in 1990. The latter utilized cameras in parallel to produce the real-time response. In 1995, the company introduced a 3-D whole-body scanner that adapts easily to a plethora of inspection tasks. What began as a one-person operation has evolved into a market leader with a staff of 250 and more than $90 million in sales serving numerous automation, inspection, and measurement applications.
In 2004, as VP of the Robot and Automation Division of the German Machinery and Plant Manufacturers' Association (VDMA), Stein helped launch the Automatica international trade show for robots, assembly, and machine vision in Munich. (The next Automatica will be held May 16–19, 2006, in Munich.) In addition to his technical accomplishments, Dr. Stein sponsors numerous educational activities. He gives lectures to open students' eyes to the world of engineering and serves as a university lecturer on machine vision. He supports "robot discipline in the classroom"—encouraging students to "learn while doing" with special robot kits designed specifically for education. He also serves on juries for school competitions in Wiesbaden and organizes school visits to technical fairs.
