MVTec’s history
An overview of the most important stations
From our humble beginnings as a small start-up in Munich, Germany, to becoming a leading provider of innovative machine vision software, our journey has been one of growth, ingenuity, and team effort. By developing software that enables automation solutions for the Industrial Internet of Things, MVTec is working closely together with its partners to provide customers the greatest possible benefit.
Learn more about the people, products, and achievements that have made us who we are today. Scroll down and immerse yourself in the story of MVTec.
MVTec Software GmbH is founded in Munich by Dr. Wolfgang Eckstein, Dr. Olaf Munkelt and Prof. Dr. Carsten Steger as a spin-off of the Technical University of Munich and the Bavarian Research Center for Knowledge-Based Systems (FORWISS). Its managing directors are Dr. Eckstein and Dr. Munkelt.
1997
April: MVTec starts working with its first sales partners. The basis for worldwide sales has thus been set.
June: The first version of MVTec HALCON hits the market. This powerful, comprehensive machine vision software already includes the option for 3D camera calibration – putting MVTec years ahead of the market. HALCON becomes the company’s flagship product.
2000
Shape-based Matching and Automatic Operator Parallelization (AOP) are making their way into HALCON. Even today, machine vision applications benefit from these groundbreaking technologies.
2003
MVTec becomes a member of the VDMA (German Engineering Federation).
August: As of this year, part of the OCR (optical character recognition) technology in HALCON is based on learning networks, the precursor to deep learning.
2005
MVTec HALCON is the first image processing software that is also available on embedded platforms. The technical term “embedded vision” has since been shaped by MVTec.
MVTec establishes its first foreign subsidiary in the USA: MVTec, LLC, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
MVTec sends its software into space: Due to the unprecedented possibilities of 3D vision, NASA chooses MVTec HALCON as the most suitable machine vision software for its humanoid robot R2, which was then sent to the ISS as a “co-worker”. Many other technologies from HALCON were also used in its work in space.
2014
The first version of MVTec MERLIC is launched onto the market. With this software, machine vision applications can be created without programming knowledge.
2015
November: MVTec cracks the mark: more than 100 employees are now part of the team.
December: MVTec moves into new headquarters. The new office building is located right next to the Munich Hirschgarten park and offers plenty of space for further growth.
2016
MVTec HALCON includes deep-learning-based OCR for the first time – its first technology to use artificial intelligence.
2019
The first version of the MVTec Deep Learning Tool is launched. Users can use it to prepare their image data for deep learning applications.
MVTec establishes its subsidary in China: MVTec Vision Technology (Kunshan) Co., Ltd. near Shanghai.
2021
MVTec continues to grow: more than 200 employees are working for the company as of this year.
MVTec is celebrating its 25th anniversary and has become the international technology market leader for machine vision software.
