An industrial vision system for surface quality inspection of transparent parts

Abstract

One of the industrial applications of computer vision is the automated detection and characterisation of surface defects. Some types of surface, such as those that are highly reflective or transparent, require the implementation of custom-made systems for automated inspections. The purpose of this article is to present a machine vision system, with an easily configurable hardware–software structure, for surface quality inspection of transparent parts. This structure permits that different products and part models may be inspected by the system. Its hardware is composed of image-capturing devices and mechanisms for manipulating and holding the part to be inspected. One such mechanism is the lighting system, which has been specifically developed to allow real-time quality control of this type of surfaces. As regards software design, a component-based approach has been adopted in order to increase reusage of the code and decrease the time required for configuring any type of part and adapting it for inspection. To test the efficiency and robustness of the industrial setup, a series of tests using a transparent industrial part, specifically, a commercial model of headlamp lens, have been assessed.