Research On Machine Vision-Based Intelligent Empty Bottle Inspector

Characterized with auto inspecting ability and high inspecting speed and accuracy, intelligent empty bottle inspector (IEBI) is one of the most necessary high technology equipments in high-speed beer production. The research and application of machine vision have been introduced to our country just several years before. Compared with developed country, we achieve fairly limited accomplishment in the research on EBI. At present, ft is necessary for us to develop EBI due to the large and increasing beer production scale in our country. Under such situation, this paper put forward a deeply and systematically research on IEBI.This paper gives an overview of current machine vision and introduces the key technologies applied in EBI. Based on the analysis of characteristics and difficulties in the realization of EBI, this paper presents line and rotary transfer structures, the mechanical and electrical system scheme of EBI. This paper focuses on the application of digital image processing technology to the defect detection in empty bottle inspection. An experimental equipment including all mechanical, electrical instruments and software is developed. The main contributions of this paper are the followings:l.An explicit description of empty bottle inspector in the beer production is givea Based on theoretically analysis and experiments, this paper concludes the characteristics and difficulties in the application of machine vision to empty bottle inspection and technology requirements for EBI. It is emphasized that EBI is an integration of optical, mechanical, electrical and digital image processing technology.2. According to the technology requirement of EBI and referring to the current advanced achievements, a scheme of EBI is proposed. The line and rotary transfer mechanical system are suggested. This paper introduces line empty bottle inspector in its mechanical structure, optical and lighting system. Three type of electric control system are discussed in this paper which are PC-based, DSP-based and vision sensor-based respectively.3. This paper concerns on the application of digital image processing technology to the detection of defect in empty bottle inspection. After concluding the traditional edge detection method, severalnovel and useful algorithms for the inspection of empty bottle bottom, finish and wall are put forward. Experiments have proved their efficiency and feasibility.4. This paper makes an attempt to using intelligent information processing technologies for empty bottle inspection. Fuzzy information processing, BP neural network and multi-sense information fusion are studied. The results of experiments show that Fuzzy technology is not better than traditional processing method in edge detection while BP neural network better but is time consumption. Multi-sense information technology succeeds to improve the dynamic scale of CCD camera, which is useful in empty inspection.5.An experimental EBI equipment is developed, which is a useful tool including the whole mechanical, electrical system and software developed with VC6.0 and VB6.0. By the aid of this experimental equipment, an empty bottle image database is built and all algorithms for inspection are tested. Another advanced experimental equipment is devised, which is more capable in various machine-vision experiments.Theoretical study and practical experiments have proved the efficiency and feasibility of thealgorithm for inspection provided in this paper. Further study is bond to benefit from theachievements of this paper.