Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (Mitsubishi Electric) and Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation (Sony) have entered into a definitive agreement on a strategic partnership aimed at accelerating the automation and advancement of manufacturing equipment and manual operations in the manufacturing industry.
Under the partnership, the two companies will establish a newly formed joint venture (JV), Advanced Vision Solutions Co., Ltd., which is scheduled to begin operations in October 2026, subject to the receipt of necessary approvals and clearances from relevant authorities.
Going forward, through the JV, the companies will develop and offer vision-sensor*1 solutions leveraging cutting-edge technologies that enable AI-based analysis of visual data directly on image sensors. The solutions will precisely capture conditions and changes across a broad range of manufacturing sites that have traditionally been difficult to visualize, and connect them to decision-making and control. They will support automation and autonomous operation of a wide range of manufacturing equipment, contributing to labor savings and unmanned operations.
This partnership will enable the two companies to integrate Sony’s industry-leading image sensors and edge AI technologies with Mitsubishi Electric’s extensive expertise in FA control systems cultivated over many years. The solutions will precisely capture conditions at manufacturing sites, product quality, equipment operations, and maintenance-related information that were previously difficult to fully understand and utilize. Furthermore, it will efficiently extract the necessary information from the acquired data and connect it to appropriate decision-making and subsequent control, enabling timely and autonomous improvements tailored to equipment and operational conditions with minimal manual intervention.
In addition to vision data, the solutions will integrate with a variety of data from manufacturing sites, contributing to the development of multimodal production systems capable of detecting changes, early signs and other conditions that cannot be fully identified from a single type of data alone. Through this initiative, the companies aim to drive the deployment of physical AI in the FA domain and provide solutions that can be used without specialized expertise in optics or AI, across broad industries seeking labor savings, autonomous operations, quality improvement, and more advanced maintenance in production environments.
