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Automated Product Inspection for Smart Manufacturing

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Computing and Artificial Intelligence".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 August 2022) | Viewed by 7271

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Engineering, Università degli Studi di Perugia, Via Goffredo Duranti 93, 06135 Perugia, Italy
Interests: computer vision; machine learning; image processing; colour; texture; biomedical image analysis; radiomics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (DIMEAS), Politecnico di Torino, 10129 Turin, Italy
Interests: mechanical engineering; biomechanics; finite elements; multibody

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, the manufacturing industry has experienced major changes as a result of growing trends towards automation, integration, and data exchange. The fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0 as it is called) refers to all those methods that enable improvements in product design and manufacturing with the main objective of capturing, optimising, and deploying essential data within many different technological fields. Artificial intelligence, data analysis, systems integration, cloud computing, cybersecurity, augmented reality, and numerical models are just some of the technologies which are increasingly finding place within technological industries.

This is fundamental for companies that want to survive in an increasingly competitive and globalised environment to guarantee customer satisfaction and reduce production costs. Automated and, in particular, in-line product inspection, play a fundamental role in this scenario: the more real-time data and what-if scenarios models can be integrated in the production system, the more the core parameters of the production process can be investigated and controlled.

In this context, the objective of this Special Issue is to bring together contributions in the field of product inspection with specific focus on methods and application related to the assessment of shape and visual features of the inspected products. We particularly welcome original research papers as well as new datasets, benchmarks, comparative evaluations, and reviews on the following topics:

  • Defect detection
  • Digital twins
  • Dimensional measurement
  • Machine vision
  • Object and materials recognition
  • Shape reconstruction and analysis
  • Soft metrology of visual appearance
  • Surface inspection and grading

Prof. Dr. Francesco Bianconi
Dr. Giulia Pascoletti
Guest Editors

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

14 pages, 35202 KiB  
Article
Reflectance Transformation Imaging Visual Saliency: Local and Global Approaches for Visual Inspection of Engineered Surfaces
by Marvin Nurit, Gaëtan Le Goïc, Stéphane Maniglier, Pierre Jochum and Alamin Mansouri
Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(21), 10778; https://doi.org/10.3390/app122110778 - 24 Oct 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1762
Abstract
Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) is a non-contact technique which consists in acquiring a set of multi-light images by varying the direction of the illumination source on a scene or a surface. This technique provides access to a wide variety of local surface attributes [...] Read more.
Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) is a non-contact technique which consists in acquiring a set of multi-light images by varying the direction of the illumination source on a scene or a surface. This technique provides access to a wide variety of local surface attributes which describe the angular reflectance of surfaces as well as their local microgeometry (stereo photometric approach). In the context of the inspection of the visual quality of surfaces, an essential issue is to be able to estimate the local visual saliency of the inspected surfaces from the often-voluminous acquired RTI data in order to quantitatively evaluate the local appearance properties of a surface. In this work, a multi-scale and multi-level methodology is proposed and the approach is extended to allow for the global comparison of different surface roughnesses in terms of their visual properties. The methodology is applied on different industrial surfaces, and the results show that the visual saliency maps thus obtained allow an objective quantitative evaluation of the local and global visual properties on the inspected surfaces. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Automated Product Inspection for Smart Manufacturing)
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16 pages, 10793 KiB  
Article
Reflectance Transformation Imaging as a Tool for Computer-Aided Visual Inspection
by Abir Zendagui, Gaëtan Le Goïc, Hermine Chatoux, Jean-Baptiste Thomas, Pierre Jochum, Stéphane Maniglier and Alamin Mansouri
Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(13), 6610; https://doi.org/10.3390/app12136610 - 29 Jun 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2044
Abstract
This work investigates the use of Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) rendering for visual inspection. This imaging technique is being used more and more often for the inspection of the visual quality of manufactured surfaces. It allows reconstructing a dynamic virtual rendering of a [...] Read more.
This work investigates the use of Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) rendering for visual inspection. This imaging technique is being used more and more often for the inspection of the visual quality of manufactured surfaces. It allows reconstructing a dynamic virtual rendering of a surface from the acquisition of a sequence of images where only the illumination direction varies. We investigate, through psychometric experimentation, the influence of different essential parameters in the RTI approach, including modeling methods, the number of lighting positions and the measurement scale. In addition, to include the dynamic aspect of perception mechanisms in the methodology, the psychometric experiments are based on a design of experiments approach and conducted on reconstructed visual rendering videos. The proposed methodology is applied to different industrial surfaces. The results show that the RTI approach can be a relevant tool for computer-aided visual inspection. The proposed methodology makes it possible to objectively quantify the influence of RTI acquisition and processing factors on the perception of visual properties, and the results obtained show that their impact in terms of visual perception can be significant. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Automated Product Inspection for Smart Manufacturing)
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12 pages, 8196 KiB  
Article
Spot Weld Inspections Using Active Thermography
by Simon Verspeek, Bart Ribbens, Xavier Maldague and Gunther Steenackers
Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(11), 5668; https://doi.org/10.3390/app12115668 - 2 Jun 2022
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 2049
Abstract
Spot welds have a significant part in the creation of automotive vehicles. Since the integrity of, for example, a car, is dependent on the performance of multiple welds, it is important to ensure the quality of each spot weld. Several attempts have been [...] Read more.
Spot welds have a significant part in the creation of automotive vehicles. Since the integrity of, for example, a car, is dependent on the performance of multiple welds, it is important to ensure the quality of each spot weld. Several attempts have been made in order to determine the quality of spot welds, but most of them do not focus on the applicability in the manufacturing process. Spot weld inspections are often performed using back heating. However, during manufacturing, robotic inspections are desired, and since the bodywork of a car is a complex shape, the accessibility from the inside of the vehicle is minor. Therefore, inspections using front heating are more suitable. In this manuscript, multiple excitation methods are compared as well as different post-processing techniques. The used excitation techniques can be divided into light heating and inductive heating. Light heating is further divided in lock-in thermography and pulse thermography. The used post-processing techniques are principle component analysis and fast Fourier transform. Inductive heating turns out to be the most suitable measurement technique since it is fast and can be performed as front and back heating. Both investigated post-processing techniques deliver suitable information, such as relief images and information of the internal structure of the spot weld. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Automated Product Inspection for Smart Manufacturing)
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