Building stuff that works

by Tom Koopen (De Tijdelijke Expert)

Nothing makes an engineer more happy than a fully functional machine. Running flawlessly whole day long. Automatically all components of a product are assembled, while the whole process is monitored by a perfect pair of eyes: our computer vision system. While the result that should be achieved is crystal clear, the road to this result can be a rocky mountain path. Their are all kinds of technical ravines for you to fall in. But with the right tools and knowledge we can navigate our way to the peak of a great system. We will trace our optics, lay out our software designs, map our needed signals and think about all the dirt that will come along this journey. Based on the lessons learned in the past 25 years, I will guide you to a less rocky journey is building a machine that just works.

Tom Koopen is a highly experienced professional in computer vision and deep learning. He holds a Master’s Degree in Applied Physics from the University of Twente, specializing in optical measurement systems. With over 25 years of experience in computer vision, Tom has worked with various companies in the Netherlands. Since 2013 he is an entrepreneur at “de tijdelijke expert”, assisting customers with the application of computer vision technology, focusing on measurements, identification, and sorting of products. Recently he founded “textilemining.eco” to build innovative machines for textile recycling. He has designed lighting systems, selected and optimized cameras, and written software for thousands of hours. Some of his notable projects include inspecting plastic crates for contamination, improving the sorting of plastics, metals and flower bulbs. He developed a 3D scanner to recognize roof tiles for Luijtgaarden B.V. and measured colors during high-speed printing processes at QI Press Controls. Oh, and don’t forget the beer bottle inspection with 10 per second about 20 years ago. Tom has been a board member of the Nederlandse Vereniging voor Patroonherkenning en Beeldverwerking (NVPHBV), reflecting his commitment to the field.

Other keynotes at our Winter Meeting 2025:

• From partly to fully automated healthcare, and beyond by Bram van Ginneken
• Computational imaging methods on artworks from the Rijksmuseum collection by Džemila Šero