A study on the Recognition of Balance Direction in Washing Machine using Machine Vision System

When washing machine is rotated in the laundry, it tends to lean toward one side. This tendency causes a serious vibration. The balance of washing machine plays an important role in order to reduce the vibration by injecting the sand or the salt water into the balance of washing machine. The hot plate welder is used to prevent from outflow of contents. The hot plate welder brings about many problems which is concerned with accidents. The direction recognition and location information of the balance are required in this system. In this paper, the recognition direction of balance in washing machine using machine vision system is studied. The template matching algorithm compares sub-image with original image acquired in real-time to obtain a center point of balance image. The mid points and the edges of balance are estimated by the edge detection and gauging algorithms. The data acquired by these results is used for recognition direction of balance. The automation software for image processing is developed by using LabVIEW.