Development of damage detection system for container

There is a strong demand for an automatic detection system of damage on the surface of a container. The system has to detect holes or cracks and distinguish from paint, dirt, dents, rust and so on. It is very difficult to distinguish these features using an image obtained from a 2D CCD camera. To overcome this problem, the authors propose a method for detecting holes and cracks easily by using controlling lights. This method actively detects the condition of the surface and is based on the photometric stereo method.

[1]  R.J. Woodham,et al.  Determining surface curvature with photometric stereo , 1989, Proceedings, 1989 International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[2]  P. Mengel Automated inspection of solder joints on PC boards by supplementary processing of 3D and gray-level images , 1990, [Proceedings] IECON '90: 16th Annual Conference of IEEE Industrial Electronics Society.