Design and application of industrial machine vision systems

In this paper, the role and importance of the machine vision systems in the industrial applications are described. First understanding of the vision in terms of a universal concept is explained. System design methodology is discussed and a generic machine vision model is reported. Such a machine includes systems and sub-systems, which of course depend on the type of applications and required tasks. In general, expected functions from a vision machine are the exploitation and imposition of the environmental constraint of a scene, the capturing of the images, analysis of those captured images, recognition of certain objects and features within each image, and the initiation of subsequent actions in order to accept or reject the corresponding objects. After a vision system performs all these stages, the task in hand is almost completed. Here, the sequence and proper functioning of each system and sub-systems in terms of high-quality images is explained. In operation, there is a scene with some constraint, first step for the machine is the image acquisition, pre-processing of image, segmentation, feature extraction, classification, inspection, and finally actuation, which is an interaction with the scene under study. At the end of this report, industrial image vision applications are explained in detail. Such applications include the area of automated visual inspection (AVI), process control, parts identification, and important role in the robotic guidance and control. Vision developments in manufacturing that can result in improvements in the reliability, in the product quality, and enabling technology for a new production process are presented. The key points in design and applications of a machine vision system are also presented. Such considerations can be generally classified into the six different categories such as the scene constraints, image acquisition, image preprocessing, image processing, machine vision justification, and finally the systematic considerations. Each aspect of such processes is described here and the proper condition for an optimal design is reported. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.