TRANSPUTER-BASED FEATURE-EXTRACTION AND SHAPE-ANALYSIS

This paper describes computer vision software for a project, the aim o f which is to develop a prototype of a fast, low-cost machine vision s ystem for the inspection of surface mount electronic assemblies and so lder joints. The system uses advanced edge detection and shape descrip tion software to analyse the board, taking data from a simple optical platform. This platform is used as opposed to more complex alternative s such as laser range-finding/profiling, structured light, thermal or X-ray techniques. Hence the sophistication of this system lies in the software and not in the data capture technology. Transputers are used to provide an economical means of attaining the necessary computationa l power for the image analysis. This leads to a low cost solution that would be attractive to surface mount manufacturer's. This paper descr ibes the software modules required to perform feature extraction and s hape analysis for inspection and how the modules are parallelized to r un on a transputer network