ACHIEVING AUTOMATION IN LEATHER SURFACE INSPECTION

Reliably and effectively detecting and classifying leather surface def ects are of great importance to both the tanneries and industries that use leather as a main raw material such as leather footwear and handb ag manufacturers. This paper discusses some important issues on inspec ting leather surfaces using the Machine Vision System. These investiga tions include defect detection algorithms, defect classification metho ds, material handling, and other aspects that are associated with this research. The proposed visual inspection system is capable of inspect ing leather surfaces automatically. The expected advantages of using s uch system in the real production environment are also analysed. (C) 1 997 Elsevier Science B.V.