Company: VITRONIC Machine Vision
Headquarters: Wiesbaden, Hesse
Signature product: Automated traffic enforcement and license plate readers
Website: https://www.vitronic.com/en-us/corporate-home
1. Where did your company name originate from?
VITRONIC Machine Vision’s name represents the company’s focus on machine vision technology, industrial image processing, and its specialized products and software for image-based identification, quality inspection and process optimization.
2. What was the inspiration behind starting your company?
The VITRONIC Spirit was already clear when it was founded in 1984 by the young engineer Dr. Norbert Stein. But even then, VITRONIC’s founder Dr. Norbert Stein saw the future potential of machine vision systems. “At the time, in 1984, machine vision was unknown outside medicine and perhaps space technology,” Stein recalls. It looks completely different today. There has been a double-digit growth in machine vision systems for years, with no end in sight. The areas of use grow from day to day. The systems’ performance and precision are transforming entire industries. And VITRONIC is now a global player with over 1,300 employees.
3. What is your signature product and how does it work?
VITRONIC has developed vision systems for the traffic industry to provide automated traffic enforcement and license plate readers. With scanning LiDAR technology, VITRONIC introduced a new and advantageous measuring technique into the field, which then thoroughly shook up the traffic monitoring market. “Speed cameras” were replaced by powerful scanning LiDAR systems to record and digitally document speeding violations and further increase the degree of automation in case processing. The result: less effort for communities, more road safety for everyone.
4. Why do you believe your products are essential to the police community?
Excessive speed is the main cause of road traffic fatalities. VITRONIC develops high-performance technology to improve the safety of roads across the globe. The company is the ideal supplier of speed enforcement cameras. Our fixed, semi-stationary and mobile solutions offer the ideal platform for every requirement. In addition, our use of scanning LiDAR technology has revolutionized the precision of speed enforcement. VITRONIC helps police forces improve and protect public safety. With powerful automated license plate readers suspicious vehicles can be monitored and tracked. Therefore, threats and criminal offenses can be promptly detected and prevented.
5. What has been the biggest challenge your company has faced?
The American public does not fully understand automated traffic enforcement technology and how it is used, and they are understandably concerned about privacy. However, with education, we can effectively communicate the value to communities, for both safety and resource savings, while reassuring decision-makers that privacy concerns are not reflective of technology use and data storage.
6. What makes your company unique?
We are the only company that offers scanning LiDAR to capture traffic violations. LiDAR has been proven to be a more effective technology, capturing more speeding infractions without error.
7. What do your customers like best about you and your products?
Ease of use, system reliability and technological accuracy.
8. What is the most rewarding part of serving the first responder community?
We are honored to be able to support communities in their efforts to improve road safety while facilitating local governments and law enforcement agencies to save valuable resources and let law enforcement focus on more critical crime prevention activities.
9. Do you support any charitable organizations within public safety or the community? Tell us more.
VITRONIC participates in Road Safety Day, which is part of the “safe to school” program that informs children, parents and teachers about road safety in kindergarten classes. VITRONIC has also donated to canine units at police departments to support the vital role that they play in enhancing public safety and supporting law enforcement efforts.
10. Is there any fun fact or trivia that you’d like to share about you or your company?
The United States has been slower to adopt automated traffic enforcement technology than many parts of the world. In sharing the successes communities have achieved throughout the world, including many areas of the U.S., we aim to demystify the adoption of technologies to improve safety and save valuable resources.
11. What’s next for your company? Any upcoming new projects or initiatives?
VITRONIC pushes the boundaries of the feasible to build a safe and sustainable world, whether that be through product enhancements, new capabilities and novel solutions to solve client’s problems. One new product development that’s underway is incorporating our mobile automated license plate reader technology into a Whelan light bar.
We are also rolling out a new product in the United States, an enforcement trailer, that allows communities to be able to easily change locations for automated traffic enforcement to quickly adapt to changing traffic flow and safety needs.