APPLICATION OF VISION IN THE LOOP FOR INSPECTION OF LACE FABRIC

Within the textile manufacturing environment, inspection is an Importa nt process which is employed in order to ensure high quality of the fi nal products. Traditionally, this process is achieved manually which i s very tedious, time consuming and labour intensive. A central problem in automatic visual inspection and computer vision is to determine th e extent to which one shape differs from another. This is the key elem ent of any inspection algorithm. Pattern recognition operations such a s correlation, template matching and model based vision methods can al l be viewed as techniques for determining the difference between shape s. In this paper the problem of visual inspection of deformable materi als in general, and lace in particular, is considered. This is particu larly difficult to achieve due to inherent and inevitable variations b etween a 'model' and the material being inspected. A mechatronic appro ach based on correlation along with morphological filters and 'active vision in the loop' using a line-scan CCD camera is presented. The uti lized algorithm and its advantages and disadvantages are also discusse d. (C) 1998 Academic Press.