FARO®, a business of AMETEK®, Inc recaps a successful 2025 and optimistically looks ahead in anticipation of 2026
Sixty-five years ago this month, a classic episode from the American sci-fi anthology series The Twilight Zone, The Night of the Meek, often regarded as among the show’s most heartfelt, aired for the first time on US television days before Christmas 1960.
In it, a down-on-his-luck department store Santa discovers he has a special gift and a one-of-a-kind tool: a magical toy bag where within its supernatural depths, he can summon any toy or object a child or adult desires.
Santa, AKA Henry Corwin, is just as bewildered as the rest of the cast. “As long as [the bag is] putting out, I’m putting in,” he exclaims. It’s a touching narrative that speaks to the young and old in all of us, in any decade, and a reminder that if you ask with respect thou shalt often receive.
Joy to the reality capture world!
Ametek FARO may not be the corporate equivalent of the actual Kris Kringle.
And it may not have an endless bag of “toys” – digital reality capture hardware and software offerings –but it does value listening to its customers. And addressing customer needs wherever possible. Our portfolio may not be as limitless as Henry Corwin’s but in 2025, it did take reindeer-like gallops in a variety of ways.
FARO achieved this hoof-stomping success in part through its spirited pace of hardware and software releases. But perhaps more importantly, we did so by laying the groundwork for the year ahead with upgrades to FARO Sphere XG, our propriety digital reality platform. More on that later.
In the closing months of 2024, FARO launched the Focus Premium Max and the Orbis Premium. And this spring, the Blink Imaging Laser Scanner.
Three tools, numerous opportunities, across an enormous range of architecture engineering, construction and geospatial applications. While a 950-word recap will by no means do this section total justice, it’s important to highlight some of the ways these three products have impacted AEC industries.
- Focus range: Tripod-based terrestrial laser scanners that capture scan data to create accurate, complete datasets for various applications such as as-built documentation, Building Information Modelling (BIM), industrial facility management and infrastructure projects providing a strong foundation for conversions, extensions, space optimisation, structural analysis and maintenance.
- Orbis Premium: Offers versatile scanning workflows, combining fast mobile scanning data acquisition with detailed static scans using Flash Technology. This scanner thrives in the geospatial industry, especially through infrastructure surveying or corridor mapping, making it the ideal choice for tasks that demand flexibility and precision in often hard-to reach/rugged locations.
- Blink: Provides high-quality visuals, empowering field teams to confidently capture every detail more often on more jobsites without requiring a reality capture expert. Blink can resolve on-site issues faster with indisputable, transparent and easy-to-understand information about the task at hand with detailed 3D visual documentation.
Together, these tools form the hardware backbone of FARO’s digital reality product portfolio. While each solution offers some overlapping capabilities, their true value comes in their ability to maximise specific use cases. It’s a delicate balancing act, factoring in speed, accuracy, portability, ease-of-use and cost.
Don’t Go Soft on Software
And yet for all the hardware usefulness highlighted above, the evolving story at FARO (and elsewhere) is one of subscription-based software, cloud-based collaboration and increasing global interconnectivity. In the context of the Information Age, or what some now call the Augmentation Age or the Age of AI, with sophisticated language learning models cropping up seemingly everywhere, this should come as little surprise.
Not only is software-as-a-service (SaaS) ubiquitous today but it is also becoming smart. Very smart.
Sphere XG’s Floorplan tool is but one example of a new generation of advanced technology that can convert a point cloud into a clean 2D floorplan, using algorithms that interpret walls, room boundaries and geometry without manual tracing.
The result is a fast, cloud-processed floorplan that can be downloaded or used directly in Sphere XG for overlays, comparison and navigation, streamlining what was once a time-consuming manual process.
It’s also increasingly the hub where FARO software lives and where data from desktop based software, like FARO SCENE can be shared and collaborated on in near-real-time, once that data is uploaded to the cloud.
HoloBuilder software and its JobWalk mobile app enables 360-degree photo construction progress-tracking, while the Stream mobile app connects both Orbis and Focus scanners, enabling real-time scan validation in the field.
Thus, in addition to sharing physical blueprints, popping USB drives in the post or traveling to inspect a jobsite, there are now complementary digital ways of doing business remotely that continue to demonstrate the increasing synergy between hardware and software.
Christmas miracles…
In the famous Twilight Zone episode, we’re reminded of a simple time-tested holiday season lesson. Good fortune comes in many forms.
If you were a child on the day before Christmas Eve, at least in The Night of the Meek 65 years ago, it was about electric trains, erector sets, dolls, a football and so on. If you were an adult, it was high-quality spirits, a pipe, a sweater, a smoking jacket, a bottle of wine, etc.
For existing and future FARO customers, it’s about the reassurance knowing that a technology leader stands at the forefront of our ongoing digital revolution. And that the significant efficiency and time management gains realised through this hardware and software union will propagate throughout 2026 and beyond.
So, if you feel inclined, contact FARO this holiday season. Reach out with your questions. Let us help you determine the right hardware and software mix that works best for your needs.
And just maybe, together, we’ll echo the sentiment of another mid-20th century great, that of Bing Crosby in White Christmas, when he crooned in the penultimate stanza of the fourth verse, “may your days be merry and bright”.
*Please note that this is a commercial profile.
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