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MEDIA RELEASE: FEB 2024 | Sydney, Australia
Australian-based computer vision start-up Visionary Machines has appointed former Collins Aerospace Managing Director Sonny Foster to the role of Chief Executive Officer.
Sonny Foster (R) is Visionary Machines’ new Chief Executive Officer and Nicholas Gibbs is COO (L).
Nick Gibbs has also joined the Visionary Machines team as Chief Operating Officer from Collins Aerospace, where he held the role of Vice President — Australian Programs.
The new appointments are a major coup for Visionary Machines and coincide with its new growth phase and its transition to a commercial focus, with Foster and Gibbs to drive deeper engagement with customers and the company’s initial target markets including defence, emergency services, mining and logistics.
Established in 2019, Visionary Machines has pioneered world-leading vision-based sensor technology with the unique capability to “see” in challenging conditions.
Chief Executive Officer Sonny Foster says the technical breakthroughs made by Visionary Machines over the last 12 months have been impressive and game-changing for the industry.
“The sensor system is robust, increasingly compact and has multispectral vision, meaning that unlike other sensor modalities it can see in all weather and lighting conditions. Combined with the increasingly urgent need for passive sensor systems, Visionary Machines is in a unique position and one that we will be looking to rapidly capitalise on.
Nick and I have been impressed with the technology, the team, and are excited by the opportunity to take Visionary Machines forward as the global leader in computer vision.” says Mr Foster.
Mr Gibbs says the commercialisation of innovation supported by Government funding has the potential to deliver hugely significant economic and employment opportunities for Australia.
“In cases where that innovation directly benefits the Government itself, as is the case with Visionary Machines’ disruptive enhancement of our defence capabilities, the benefits come full circle.”
With over 55 years of collective experience, Foster and Gibbs bring comprehensive market understanding, engineering and technical management backgrounds to Visionary Machines, having been directly responsible for the successful growth of Collins Aerospace in Australia.
“We are extremely excited to have Sonny and Nick join Visionary Machines,” says former CEO and co-founder Gary Aitchison.
“To attract this kind of talent at this stage of the business development is a great barometer of the potential of our product. Any machine that wants to act autonomously needs to know the world around it and that’s the solution we’ve developed.
“Our product, together with the combined business acumen and proven ability of both these executives to successfully take industry leading technologies to market will enable Visionary Machines to capitalise on the significant research and development investment and pursue opportunities in the defence and commercial industries.”
What is Pandion TM ?
The Visionary Machines vision system is a step change capability in 3D sensing — the capacity to understand the distance to everything in the environment around you in real-time.
Two things make PandionTM stand apart for our customers, firstly it is completely passive, as it sends no signals into the environment that can be detected or can harm observers. Secondly, PandionTM works in all weather conditions, as it combines visible light and infrared light in one camera array. These are critical technology differentiators for Defence where stealth is a priority.
About Visionary Machines
Visionary Machines creates vision systems for safer and smarter machine autonomy.
Visionary Machines simplifies autonomous systems, empowering them to see and intelligently interact with their environment, with superior camera-based vision and 3D spatial awareness.
Staffed by a group of world-leading computer vision and robotics experts, Visionary Machines is a sovereign Australian company headquartered in Sydney with a research arm based in Oxford, United Kingdom.
Media contacts
Samson Lee
Chief Technology Evangelist
Email: [email protected]
Chelsea Reid
Chief Marketing Officer
Email: [email protected]
Website: visionarymachines.com
Office number: +61 472 733 265
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