Scribd
Upload
38 views

Wheels Identification Using Machine Vision Technology: Axis

This document summarizes a research paper on identifying automotive wheels using machine vision. An image processing system extracts features from images of wheels, such as the size and shape of wheel windows. These features are used to classify wheels into different types based on statistical pattern recognition algorithms. The system achieves over 99% accuracy in identifying wheel types independently of location or orientation in images.

Uploaded by

MekaTron
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
38 views

Wheels Identification Using Machine Vision Technology: Axis

This document summarizes a research paper on identifying automotive wheels using machine vision. An image processing system extracts features from images of wheels, such as the size and shape of wheel windows. These features are used to classify wheels into different types based on statistical pattern recognition algorithms. The system achieves over 99% accuracy in identifying wheel types independently of location or orientation in images.

Uploaded by

MekaTron
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 3

WHEELS IDENTIFICATION USING MACHINE VISION TECHNOLOGY

Behrouz N.Shabestari, John W. V. Miller and Victoria Wedding


Edison Industrial Systems Center
1700 N.Westwood, Suite 2286
Toledo, Ohio 43607
A sample set of wheels was used to create a cluster for each
wheel type. The Mahalonobis minimum distance classifier
was then used for identification [3.4].

II. DATA ACQUISITION AND PROCESSING


An image of each wheel was acquired using a standard CCD
matrix camera. A frame grabber digitized the camera signal to
a 320 by 240 pixels image with 256 gray levels as shown in
Figure 1.

ABSTRACT
An application of an on-line vision system using statistical
pattern recognition algorithms for identifying various polycast
wheels is described. The recognition is independent of part
orientation and position in camera field of view. Simplicity,
efficiency, low-cost and easy training for new designs are
important criteria of the system. Software and algorithms are
developed to locate the wheel, exclude the windows of the
wheel and extract features which are used for classification.
The results indicate a constraint-free system with real time
recognition rate and considerable increase in recognition
accuracy.

An effective and c o m t recognition of such an image for the


wide variety of wheel styles with location and orientation
variation would involve a huge amount of data processing
unless the number of reference patterns could be reduced.
Hence, the following procedure was used to allow
redescription of the images in terms of significant information
regardless of location and orientation.
In order to speed the recognition process efficiently, it was
necessary to run-length encode the gray-scale image very
rapidly by recording the locations of the transitions pixels on a
given scan that were greater or less than the estimated
threshold.
Simultaneously, the histogram of the image was generated by
using the gray-scale values as indices to an array of long
integers and incrementing selected elements. This histogram
was used to determine a painted from an unpainted wheel
before classification.

L INTRODUCTION
In a certain production process, automotive wheels of wide
variety of style and sizes are placed on a conveyor in random
order and moved through the process. Prior to a subsequent
operation, each wheel must be identified for the process
according to its type. An operator previously identified each
wheel using a control panel which contained a series of push
button switches. An additional switch was used to distinguish
a painted from an unpainted wheel. A programmable logic
controller (PLC) reads the selected switch and initiates the
proper manufacturing sequence for the identified wheel.

Following image encoding, connectivity analysis was


performed by linking strings on adjacent scans that overlap
until all strings have been assigned to blobs (connected
regions) [5]. The resulting blobs are shown in Figure 2.
Blob analysis was performed and each blob attributes were
obtained from stored information. The first order moments
were calculated to provide the x and y centers of mass for the
calculation of second order central moments [6,7]. The
second order moments were fitted to an ellipse to provide
orientation invariant information. Blob major and minor axis
were obtained by fitting the ellipse. The area of each blob in
pixels was determined and the blob aspect ratio was calculated
by the ratio of minor and major axis. These calculations are
relatively straightforward and are described briefly in
Appendix A.

Style varieties and similarities, combined with conveyor speed


made reliable manual recognition difficult. Errors were
inevitable. The result of misidentification was unnecessary
scrap and reworks. Automated wheel identification using
machine vision technology resulted in higher accuracy and an
immediate economic payback [1,2]. Simplicity, efficiency
and low cost were important criteria of the vision system.
This paper describes how a lowcost PC-based vision system
was used effectively in real time to recognize images of
different types of wheels [ 11. Each wheel was analyzed based
on the shapes of its windows using a small set of features.

Blobs not associated with windows were eliminated based on


specific geometric properties. Blob area was used to eliminate
blobs that were either too big or too small to be windows. The
geometrical center of the remaining blobs were then used to
estimate the wheel center. Next, the distance of each blobs

Images of the wheels were acquired, digitized and processed.


Useful features were extracted from the wheel windows.

273
CH3051-0/91/0000-0273 $1.00

1991 IEEE

geometrical center from the wheel center was determined to


eliminate blobs that were too near or far from the wheel
center. The remaining blobs represent the wheels windows
which were used for classification as shown in Figure 3.

III. FEATURE EXTRACTION AND CLASSIFICATION


The remaining blobs features were median filtered to reduce
error and select the most typical window. The following
attributes of the window were used for classification.

1. Blob major axis

2. Blob minor axis

3. Blob aspect ratio


4. Blob area in pixels

5. Blob radius (the distance from the center of the


wheel to the geometrical center of the blob)

To measure the similarity which will assign the pattern to the


domain of a particular cluster, it was necessary to establish
mean and covariance statistics for each wheel on the a
production line.

Figure 1. Gray Level h u g e

Class statistics were determined with a set of samples. The


mean vector mi and covariance matrix C i of each population i
were determined. The Mahalonobis distance from X to mi
then is calculated by

where C i - 1 is the inverse of sample covariance mamx C i .


The distance D i is a measure of similarity; the smaller the
distance, the greater the similarity.
The Mahalanobis distance was calculated to each class mean
in the five-dimensional feature space. Features with small
variances were weighted more heavily then features with large
variances. The wheel was assigned to the class whose class
mean is closest to the features of the most typical blob in the
five-dimensional space after normalization.
Figure 2. Binary Image after ConnecUvity

IV. DISCUSSION
The initial approach used a back lighting scheme on quarter
wheel. A single high resolution window was extracted and
analyzed. However, due to the excessive location variation
and additional request to identify painted from unpainted
wheels. a different approach was taken. A front lighting
scheme was used to determine the presence or absence of
paint based on reflectivity. A larger field of view was used to
cover whole wheel and location variations. A ring light was
used for uniform lighting to minimize shadowing.
Since the system is sensitive to light variations, efficiency
could be improved by adjusting for illumination variations.
This can be accomplished by daily calibration using a golden
part or implementation of auto-thresholding algorithms based
on scene properties.

Figure 3. Final Blobs

274

V. CONCLUSION

APPENDIX A

This project has successfully demonstrated a low-cost PCbased vision system for identifying automotive wheels. The
results indicate that statistical pattern recognition algorithms
were well suited for such applications. The system recognizes
unusual patterns such as an empty conveyor and could be
easily trained to include new designs for identification. The
time required for identification on a 25 MHz 386 PC
compatible machine was approximately 2 seconds. The
identification accuracy was over 99 percent.

The two-dimensional moments of a digital image are usually


approximated by double summations as
Mmn =

cc xmynp (x,Y)

(1)

XY

where ~ m isn (m,n)th joint moment and p (x,y) is intensity


matrix in which x and y are discrete locations of image pixels.
The central moments hnof p ( x ,y ) are defined as

VI. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was funded by Motor Wheel Corporation, Luckey,
Ohio. The authors wish to thank Mr. Richard J. Ashman,
Engineering Manager and his p u p at Motor Wheel for their
assistance in implementation of the system.

where Mio/Moo is the x center of mass and Moi/Moo is the


y center of mass.

REFERENCES

Second order central moments are used for fitting an ellipse to


the data. The matrix A of second moments and first cross
moments A is defined as

B. N. Shabestari, J. W. V. Miller and V. Wedding,


"Wheel Identification System," Technical Report,
Edison Industrial Systems Center, July 1990.
R. E. Tjia, K. J. Cios and B. N. Shabestari, "Neural
Networks In Identification of Car Wheels from Gray
Level Images," Fourth Conference on Neural
Networks and Parallel Distributed Processing, Indiana
University-Purdue University, April 1991.

A =

J. T. Tou and R. C. Gonzalez, Pattem Recognition


Principles.
Massachusetts:
Addison-Wesley
Publishing Company, 1974.

P20

Pll

Pll

Po2

(3)

The eigenvalues and eigenvectors are found such that


XTAX = @

(4)

J. Sklansky and G. N. Wassel, Pattem Classifiers and


Trainable Machines. New York Springer-Verlag
where @ is a diagonal matrix containing the eigenvalues of A,
X is the associated eigenvectors, and XT is the transpose of X.

R. Cunnigham, "Segmenting Binary Images,"


Robotics Age, Vol. 3, No. 4, July/August 1981.

The directions of the orthogonal eigenvectors correspond to


the orientation of the axes of an ellipse with moments as given
in equation (3). The eigenvector associated with the dominant
eigenvalue points is in the direction of the major axis and may
be used as the orientation of the object.

C. H. Teh and R. D. Chin, "On Digital Approximation


of Moment Invariants." Computer Vision, Graphics,
and Image Processing, Vol. 33, No. 3, March 1986.
N. Zuech, Applying Machine Vision.
John Wiley and Sons, 1988.

New York:

275

You might also like