During the first year of the PYI program research will concentrate in the area of computer vision inspection. An element of success will be the integration of state-of-the-art technology into the development of an automatic on-line inspection system. The system, consisting of a mechanical handler, a vision system, and a dedicated computer, will inspect parts with a polygonal profile and reject those with out-of-tolerance dimensions, or surface flaws. Optimization techniques will be developed to analyze digital images in order to determine the orientation of parts and to perform dimensional measurement. The techniques must have the flexibility to handle parts with different polygonal shapes, size, and tolerance levels. Quality control issues and procedures to facilitate the real-time implementation of the techniques will also be investigated.
