AOS, a High-Speed Success Story: Research and Technology


Monday, February 04, 2013 by Aargau Services

Rudolf Hug produces computers which still perform flawlessly at minus 40 or plus 85 degrees Celsius. Now Hug is on the road to success in the field of camera technology: cameras which are able to shoot up to 32,000 images a second are leaving Baden-Dättwil for global export.

Hug first appeared in the press in 1970 when he won first prize in the "Swiss youth researches" contest with his self-built digital computer. After some years spent traveling and studying in the US, Hug set up his own business in 1983. He started out with 5,000 Swiss francs start-up capital, his entire savings, and a great deal of innovation potential.

Investments in companies

His website announces in matter-of-fact manner, "HT-Holding AG with headquarters in Dättwil / Aargau has holdings in various companies in the high-tech sector." Underneath are listed five enterprises which he personally established and of which he is chairman of the board of directors.

HT-Holding, founded in 1990, generates annual net sales of 25 million Swiss francs with 50 employees. The group includes MPL AG, renowned for extremely robust hardware and software, software service provider Elsoft AG and marketing and sales organization MPI Distribution AG.

From photographer to camera manufacturer

Ambitious photographer Hug has close associations with the photographic scene. As a result, in 1994 he received an urgent inquiry from the Associated Press agency. A connecting interface between the world's first digital camera for photographic journalists and the Mac system was missing. This was just a few weeks before the winter Olympics. Hug achieved the impossible and developed the interface.

Now another of his enterprises has become the focus of worldwide interest: AOS Technologies AG - for him also "a good example of technology transfer." The ETH Zurich had developed a camera - autonomous, small and particularly fast - for high-speed recordings. The camera was intended for crash tests and research. An industrial partner was now sought. That was the hour of Stephan Trost.

The man for fast images

Trost, who knew all about fast images, knew Hug as a business angel, and they set up AOS in 2002. Trost: "With the technology transfer we had of course bought a pig in a poke. The thing did in fact work, but was not intended for industrial production. It was more of a laboratory sample..."

The camera was developed further at AOS and MPL. "After around three months, we had a functioning and buildable camera. The camera was launched onto the market in 2003 and was an immediate success."

From laboratory sample to the top three

"Our product was good enough for scientific purposes," says Hug. But the trend for these cameras is increasingly in the direction of long-term deployment. "We have currently achieved 60 seconds - we started out with recording sequences of four seconds," explains Trost.

Technology from the Universities of Applied Sciences

The University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland in Aargau is partly responsible for the rapid success of the camera. The objective was to write a new complex algorithm which prepares each pixel with a view to generating even better images. The result of this technology transfer was several sizeable steps towards color fidelity and image quality.

"That was a very fruitful, good collaboration," stresses Trost. The joint development lasted around a year and proved successful: "After eight years, our cameras are among the top three in the world," enthuses Hug.