Monitoring of Glass Production Using Vision Systems

Abstract

Applications of vision systems for control and monitoring are becoming more widespread. However, there are still specific problems in the glass industry, especially transparency of glass (many times colourless) that requires the use of special illuminations, adapters for lenses, filters, software filters, analyses of images, etc. An important problem is the choice of an optimal analysis for obtained images that should correspond with the character of obtained data. Our research is developing the use of cameras (an area scan cameras, a line scan cameras, and an intelligent cameras) for quality monitoring of glass production with connection to a PC or compact vision systems, software solutions with appropriate image analyses (using standard and new algorithms) and to solve of real problems for industry applications. The first stage of the research is: using a digital camera, an area scan camera and a line scan camera for glass melt and glass products monitoring to solve specific problems with lighting and to test some standard and non-standard analysis such as fractal geometry for the evaluation of productions and products. This article briefly shows basic information about our results and possibilities of application in the glass industry.