Company | Vision++ NV

Vision++ was founded in 2007 as a spin-off of the industrial computer vision group Visics-PSI of the K.U.Leuven. Today the Vision++ team consists of a group of highly skilled vision engineers with diverse backgrounds and specializations, who can tackle even the most demanding computer vision application.

Over the years, Vision++ has engaged in a multitude of both research oriented projects and industrial automation projects, and amongst its customers there are both renowned international players and high-tech niche players. Whatever the task at hand, our mission is to empower your ideas and help you with designing innovative best-in-class vision solutions!

Short History

Vision++ BVBA is founded in august 2007 by four former researchers of the computer vision lab Visics-PSI at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven): Rik Fransens, Joris Vanden Wyngaerd, Kurt Cornelis and Geert Caenen. Vision++ offices are located in the Haasrode Research Park, Belgium.
In april 2008 Vision++ becomes an NV (“Naamloze Vennootschap”) and Allegro Investment Fund and Asgard Invest join as investors.
In 2009, Vision++ pioneered the use of 3D laser scanning for random bin picking. The company won a research grant from IWT that led to the development of the BinPicker++ software. Vision++ demonstrates the software by creating 4 industrial-grade bin picking cells in collaboration with 4 major robot brands.
In 2016, Vision++ developed HSI-Cal, a full system calibration service for hyperspectral cameras.

Management Team

Rik Fransens

Managing Director

As Founder and CEO of Vision++, Rik is responsible for the company’s strategical and commercial aspects. He has more than 18 years of experience in computer vision and pattern recognition technologies, and is fully dedicated to continue advancing the competitive strength and growth of Vision++.

Prior to founding Vision++, Rik worked at Visics-PSI, the computer vision group of the University of Leuven (KU Leuven). At Visics-PSI, he was part of the Visics Management Team and was involved in the management of European R&D Projects. Furthermore, he performed research on various topics in computer vision, ranging from face detection & recognition, multimodal image registration to statistical modeling & classification techniques.

Rik holds a MSc-degree in Bioengineering and a MSc-degree in Artificial Intelligence, both obtained from the University of Leuven. Before he started his career as a vision researcher, he was employed as a SW analyst at COI where he was involved in the development and deployment of Belgian’s national police-SW system, and as a data analyst at British Petroleum (BP).

Kurt Cornelis

R&D Manager

Kurt is co-founder and manager of Vision++ Research and Development. He has a passion for 3D Imaging and Augmented Reality technologies including depth-from-stereo, depth-from-shading, structured light, laser line triangulation and time-of-flight techniques.

Prior to Vision++, Kurt completed a master thesis on multi-view 3D reconstruction at the University of Oxford. At the computer vision group Visics-PSI of the University of Leuven, he subsequently completed a Phd on Augmented Reality funded by the FWO (Research Foundation Flanders) and became a post-doctoral researcher, member of the Visics-PSI Management Team and manager of European R&D Projects.

Kurt is co-founder and co-developer of the initial technology of GeoAutomation NV, a Visics-PSI spin-off specialized in urban 3D mobile mapping.

Geert Caenen

Project Manager

Geert co-founded Vision++ and takes care of Project Management. Geert actively takes part in both management and development of new vision technologies for several customers. He is also responsible for representing the company in regional, national and international research programs.

Geert obtained a Master degree in Mathematics at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven) and joined the computer vision Group Visics-PSI shortly after graduating. His research covered a.o. machine learning, content-based image retrieval, texture analysis, image registration and mathematical modeling. His work was published in proceedings of several international conferences and journals.

In 2004 Geert started working part-time for the Incubator for Geo-information (IncGEO). At IncGEO he developed tools for image registration and 3D mobile mapping. He represented IncGEO at several remote sensing events and became a part-time member of ESA’s image information mining coordination group (IIMCG).