Behind every Cortha project is a team of experienced engineers, project managers, and machine vision specialists. In this series, we’re getting to know the people behind the work, from our co-founders to our latest recruits. Having already chatted with co-founder Dan and engineer Aiden, it was time we sat down with our co-founder Paul, to get his insights from 20 years in the industry.

Tell us a little bit about your background.

“I was an avionics technician in the Royal Air Force, so my background is in Electronic Engineering. I worked on aircraft, which was my first love after a childhood of reading Biggles books! In my early days, I really loved aeroplanes, and I enjoyed the technology that brought to me, it inspired me.

When I left the Air Force, I went to work in the oil and gas industry, again, in a very technological environment. Hydrographic survey, sensors, instrumentation, technology, software, everything that I enjoy working in. And during my time in the oil and gas industry, I came across a Norwegian company that was developing motion sensors. We were deploying some of the things they were designing and developing, things like 3D tailboy tracking for hydrophone streamers, using the new technology at the time which was GPS!

Then a friend of mine told me about this new company in Norway he was working for. It was a machine vision company. I didn’t really know what it was, but when I looked into it, I was very interested, it was very exciting. I was between jobs then, so I said, ‘I’m interested in getting started with your work in the UK.’ So I basically became a channel for them into the UK business, because they didn’t have that. That was 20 years ago, and in that time, I set up and established Scorpion Vision with these guys in Norway and had a fair measure of success before I left and set up Cortha.”

What led you to co found Cortha and what problem were you trying to solve at the time by setting it up?

“I was frustrated with what we were selling the customer, I felt there was a gap. We weren’t delivering what they really needed which was a high performance, ultra reliable, very robust automation system, and I was finding it difficult to achieve that. So when the opportunity arose for me to start again, I knew I needed the right people around me, and the right technology. So based on those two fundamental factors, and my ability to actually make the connections and generate the opportunities, I knew that I had a chance to set up a new business which could exploit all those knowns – those things that I sort of learnt over the years. I knew that working with those lessons, I could have some success. And that’s been proven to be true. We’ve had a lot of success, new projects and opportunities, new collaborations, new partnerships. Things are looking really good for us at Cortha.”

What does Cortha do differently compared to other machine vision or automation companies?

“I think we’re unusual in that our skill sets in the team are very broad in terms of what we can do to build an automation system.

So you have a machine vision company that will specialise in machine vision, and they’ll be good at that, but they may be lacking in terms of control automation. So when you deploy a machine vision system into a high-speed production line, there are other factors to consider in terms of how the vision system reacts and integrates with the control systems in the production line. You could have the best machine vision system in the world, detecting the most challenging defects. But if your automation system it’s built around can’t react quickly or in synchronisation, then what’s the point of having the best vision system in the world?

Likewise, if you have a really good control system that can react well to all the data coming in from vision systems, but the control system is not well designed or well planned out, then that could fail. A control system is as important as a vision system, and those two things must work hand in hand. My team has those skill sets to a very high level of capability, a lot of experience, a lot of knowledge and a lot of cleverness. So that’s really where we differ. I think a lot of companies don’t have that kind of broad capability that we have.”

What do you look for when building the Cortha team? What makes somebody a good fit?

“First of all, for a good fit, we’ve got to be pragmatic. Not laid back, but certainly not easily stressed, because it can be quite a high-pressure environment, working in manufacturing. If things aren’t working well, the customer can be very anxious about it and that can lead to confrontation. So we need to be able to handle challenging deployments.

What do I look for on the team? Well, the engineering team have got the best education, best experience, best backgrounds, and that’s really important to me. I know that we can solve any problem that’s given to us.”

When you started Cortha, what was the original vision, and has that evolved since?

“The original vision was to design and develop automation systems better than we ever have before. That was based on knowing what we know. Now that that’s been proven to be the right way of doing it, I now need to scale it up. So yes, it’s evolved and is still evolving!

From your experience, where do machine vision projects typically go wrong?

“Right at the beginning. When the proposal is written and the order is placed. Because at that point, the customer needs provide all the information to the team to be able to develop a system that’s going to solve that problem. So it needs to be all the cards on the table, and it needs to be collaboration – complete collaboration, no hiding anything.

All the facts need to be available for two reasons. Number one is to make sure the right solution is provided. Of course, that’s really important. But number two is to make sure there are no additional costs or surprises, basically. So just making sure that everybody’s on the same page. Without a really good engagement, it’s very likely it’ll fail.

When we engage with the customer, we must have equal standing with them. We can’t be seen as just another supplier, because we’re much more than that. We’re helping them build something that’s going to completely change what they do. So we must have equal standing to be able to talk to them at their level.”

There’s a lot of hype around AI in automation. Where do you think it actually adds value, and where do you think it might be overused?

“I think it’s overused in marketing. Everyone’s talking about AI. AI this, AI that. We actually have customers who ask us for an AI system, and quite often we tell them that we don’t need AI for this – and they’re confused. They think AI has solved everything, but actually, the technology that we’re using has been around for decades, so it’s not AI.

I think the term AI is extremely broad, because if you have a vision system that’s analysing products on a conveyor belt, you could argue that’s a form of artificial intelligence, because it’s looking at something, measuring, comparing, and looking for patterns. Vision systems have been doing that for decades. Most of them aren’t using neural networks, it’s logic based on data. And what is artificial intelligence? It’s data based, isn’t it?

It might be the next big thing, but it’s not going to solve all your problems. People coming out of university with a computer science degree – they’ve done a lot in AI, but they aren’t automation engineers. They aren’t optical engineers. They aren’t control systems engineers. AI doesn’t solve those problems. Those are fundamental mechanical, electrical, environmental things that need to be solved using traditional technology before you apply AI.

I see AI as like the icing on the cake. The cake has been baked, with the right ingredients, it’s risen to the right height. It looks good and it smells good. And then there’s something particularly challenging that that well-built system (or cake) must solve, but without that perfectly baked cake, you can’t solve it with AI.”

What is something that you’ve learned over the years that has fundamentally changed how you design or deliver systems?

“I think it’s awareness of the things that you think you know, but you don’t. So I think, I’m not young, and if there’s anything I can contribute to a conversation now, it’s to make sure that people aren’t making assumptions about things they don’t really understand. And that easily happens in a young team. You get group think where people assume what the problem is. But they actually haven’t explored all the alternatives to it, and there’s also things that they don’t really know, so they’ve got to go and find out.

They look at X, and think that’s the answer. But they haven’t considered Y. So I think for me, it’s actually doing the research, really understanding things. I’m not just talking about building machine vision system. I’m talking about everything in life.”

Looking ahead, what excites you most about the future of machine vision, and where do you see Cortha fitting into that?

“It might sound a bit of a contradiction, but I see AI as the big future for automation. PLCs control systems, conveyor belts, software, automation software – all these things are components in automation and vision systems. In the last few years, they’ve become less expensive and more capable, more reliable, and more accepted. So all those things together means that there’s a big future for machine vision and factory automation. People accept it more than they did 20 years ago.

When I started in this business, I’d see factories with vision system that were switched off because they just didn’t work properly. That’s not the case now. People understand them better and deployments are better, but AI is going to take it to the next level. Integrating AI into a vision system can massively increase capability and that has a direct impact on certain areas, such as farming and food production – and those are areas we’re focusing on at Cortha.”

Whether you’re starting from scratch or stuck with a system that isn’t delivering, Cortha can help. From PLCs behaving unexpectedly to robots falling short of their potential, vision systems that underperform to installations you’ve never been quite happy with – our team has the breadth of expertise to diagnose and fix existing setups, as well as design better ones from the ground up. Get in touch to chat about what’s possible.