A Circular Electronic Elements Localization Method Based on ABC Algorithm

In PCB circuit detection system, it is necessary to locate and measure elements accurately. For the circular electronic elements in PCB, this paper proposes a localization method based on artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm. In this method, the three-point method is introduced to correspond a circle with an individual in bee colony, so that the circles are located though bee colony's search. The first step of circle localization method is extracting the edge in PCB images with the canny operator, then the ABC algorithm is used to search the circles. The mean gray values of the candidate circles are defined as fitness function. Under the guidance of the fitness function, the proposed method can locate an optimal circle in an iteration. In every iteration, the method needs delete the already located circles to prevent that the circles are located repeatedly until all circular electronic elements are located. Experiments show that the method can locate the circular electronic elements with shorter execution time and higher accuracy to meet industrial needs.