Image. LASER World of PHOTONICS takes place at the Messe München fairgrounds, outside of Munich. Courtesy Messe München.
From June 26-29, 2017, in five large halls and a conference center, LASER World of PHOTONICS will host the largest international gathering of manufacturers and customers of photonics products and technologies. The trade fair and technical conference, held biannually and both managed by Messe München, will draw over 1200 exhibitors and 31,000 researchers and professionals from fundamental and application-based photonics applications in industry, security, science, and medicine.
The trade fair is targeting dynamic and growing applications in which optical technologies provide a clear boost to knowledge, productivity, and process reliability. Here’s a brief introduction to what you will find at “the fair” this summer. There’s much more on the trade fair website: www.world-of-photonics.com.
The exhibition itself is very large and comprehensive, with halls or parts of halls focused exclusively on 10 different application areas:
- Imaging
- Sensors, test and measurement, and optical measurement systems
- Lasers and laser systems for production engineering
- Biophotonics and medical engineering
- Optics
- Manufacturing technology for optics
- Lasers and optoelectronics
- Optical information and communication
- Illumination and energy
- Security
World of Photonics Congress
The technical conferences at the World of Photonics Congress reflect the close relationship between research and industry and the focus on photonics applications in the industrial, scientific, and medical sectors.
The Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics/Europe and the European Quantum Electronics Conference will showcase laser source development, materials, ultrafast science, fiber optics, nonlinear optics, terahertz sources, high-field physics, optical telecommunications, nanophotonics, biophotonics, and laser material processsing. EQEC will feature the fundamentals of quantum optics, quantum information and communication, ultracold quantum matter, precision metrology, ultrafast optical science, nonlinear phenomena and self-organization, plasmonics and metamaterials, fundamental nanooptics, two-dimensional materials, and theoretical and computational photonics.
The Lasers in Manufacturing (LiM) 2017 is a scientific conference on both the latest advances and the future trends in the field of laser materials processing, including its potential for industrial applications. It also features a sub-conference on additive manufacturing, all organized by the German Scientific Laser Society (WLT).
EOS Conferences on Optical Technologies
This forum is for all aspects of optical technologies, like manufacturing optical systems, optofluidics, optomechanical engineering, and light engineering.
The conference, organized by SPIE Europe, focuses on the latest research in optical metrology, videometrics, and machine vision, with applications for solving measurement and inspection problems in industrial design and production engineering, vehicle navigation, multimedia technology, biotechnology, architecture, archaeology, and arts. Special emphasis is directed to robot guidance, image sequence processing, sensor fusion and scene modeling, and characterization of biomaterials, as well as to the preservation of our shared cultural heritage.
The European Conferences on Biomedical Optics (ECBO) is sponsored by OSA and SPIE, and brings together scientists, engineers, and clinicians who work with optics and photonics to solve problems in medicine and biomedicine. Presentations will cover basic science, novel technology, and applications in the areas of advanced microscopy, clinical and biomedical spectroscopy, diffuse optical imaging, molecular imaging, neurophotonics and optogenetics, optical coherence tomography, therapeutic laser applications, laser-tissue interactions, optoacoustic methods, and other novel biophotonics techniques.
The tradeshow floor will also host a series of application-oriented panels that focus on biophotonics and medical applications, optical metrology and imaging, laser and optics, and industrial laser applications. A few highlights include discussion of how laser-based fluorescence measurements, in combination with sensitive and low-readout-noise image sensors, are pushing the strong development of new endoscopy and microscopy techniques and methods.
In addition, a panel on future quantum sensors for optical metrology aims to present an overview on the current European Quantum Manifesto and German QUTEGA initiative and its impact for next-generation quantum sensors to enable new optical metrology applications.
Another panel will look at high-power diode lasers, which have become well established as pump sources for solid-state and fiber lasers, for material processing and medical applications.
Significant progress in output power, brightness, and production technology is still extending their range of applications. Innovative high-power diode laser designs based on dense spectral beam combining show this technology’s potential to reach applications that have so far been dominated by solid-state lasers.
Just getting started
Many companies exhibiting at LASER World of PHOTONICS were only founded within the past 30 years, and there is a continuous conveyor belt of new startups. This year, the most recent generation of new companies will be highlighted at Startup World and the Photonics Award—organized in collaboration with the Anwendungszentrum GmbH Oberpfaffenhofen (AZO).
In addition, the first Make Light MAKEATHON will show how different teams develop innovative products in various fields of photonics—in only 24 hours—starting on June 27, 2017.
Finally, the first hands-on demonstration of four different devices for augmented, mixed, and virtual reality will be a highlight of the SPIE Digital Optical Technologies conference, which will focus on components, systems design, and applications across social, academic, medical, and industrial fields. Participants who register at innovation(at)spie.org will be able to evaluate Microsoft Hololens mixed reality headset, Oculus CV1virtual reality headset and hand controllers, HTC Vive virtual reality headset and hand controllers, and Sony Playstation VR virtual reality headset and hand controllers.
