Giving shape to technology, freshness to value

One of Nikon's key current goals is to provide new solutions that utilize our cultivated technologies. Here, we introduce some of the challenges our creative designers and development engineers have dedicated themselves to overcoming as they work to deliver Nikon's new solutions including robot vision and riblet processing, their technologies and values to as many people as possible.

A public debut

Nikon is dedicated to supporting manufacturing and research in plants and laboratories. From microscopes, semiconductors, FPD lithography and industrial equipment to optical processing machines, all of these products pursue ease of use, reliability, and performance, just as Nikon cameras have always done. The end goal is to contribute to a broad spectrum of business expansion opportunities as well as providing solutions to different social issues.

The latest initiatives by the company include dynamic robot vision that goes beyond that of the human eye, and riblet processing that applies microscopic processing inspired by shark skin to a surface for a variety of applications. Both technologies effectively save manpower during the manufacturing process while reducing energy consumption, and are now being developed for mass production.

In-development technologies that were created for business opportunities: these are things you don't normally hear about unless you're a staff member. However, we had been presented with an opportunity to unveil them to the world, so the question "How can we communicate Nikon's technologies and initiatives at this unique event?" became the start of our creative designers' journey on this unprecedented mission.

To explain the unprecedented

Nikon's robot vision is a technology that performs its tasks by capturing fast-moving objects and recognizing their shape and material accurately with dynamic vision that is beyond the human eye. Meanwhile, our riblet processing reduces air friction produced on wind turbines and aircraft wings with microscopic surface structures, taking advantage of Nikon's optical and precision technologies. Both of these are now under development for practical use.

The slogan the team in charge of developing these cutting-edge technologies adopted is "The real value lies in technology that's really necessary" — not only do they develop advanced technologies, but they also dedicate themselves to making such technologies practical and easy to use.

Our creative designers' mission is to share these development engineers' passion and refine the pure technology and value to something that has broad public appeal. At this time, we needed to provide surprise, expectations, dreams and movement — a feeling of "Wow, we can do all these kinds of things with these new technologies", or "I could use this technology in this way" — that attracts not only the robot and metal processing experts, but also anyone else visiting the exhibition.

An attractive shape and surprising motion

Robot vision, which is designed to be employed at a variety of manufacturing sites for such processes as selection, welding and assembly, is a prototype but pursues the same level of perfection as a mass-produced product. The pure white exterior with its organic form that would fit as comfortably in a home as well as a factory, also incorporates advanced technology such as LED light-emitting elements.

The very first step to disseminating these new technologies to the world and solving the social issues they address is to let as many people know about their existence in the first place. In this, Nikon's challenge will continue.

Our ongoing challenge to spread the technology