ANN ARBOR, MI — North American sales of machine vision components and systems grew 15 percent to $2.3 billion in 2014, its highest annual total on record, according to new statistics issued by AIA.

Total machine vision sales include sales of machine vision systems and components. The machine vision systems category saw growth of 16 percent to $2 billion in 2014. Within machine vision systems, sales of smart cameras expanded by 28 percent to $301 million, while application specific machine vision systems increased 14 percent to $1.7 billion.

Similarly, machine vision components had a strong year with 13 percent growth to $305 million. The leading product categories for machine vision components in terms of growth were software (19 percent to $16 million), cameras (17 percent to $165 million), lighting (16 percent to $51 million), and optics (14 percent $38 million).

“Industry experts expect demand to continue increasing for machine vision components in the next six months,” said Alex Shikany, AIA’s director of market analysis. “For machine vision systems however, 54 percent of survey respondents believe the category will remain flat, 27 percent expect an increase and 19 percent expect a decline.”

In addition to its sales tracking report, AIA will be releasing its 2015 Global Machine Vision Camera Study later this year, which will be available at a discounted rate to AIA members. AIA also prepares studies on special topics and industries, such as its upcoming Life Sciences report, which it makes available to all AIA members free of charge on Vision Online.

For more information, visit www.visiononline.org.