Learning from others

There’s always something to be learnt by looking at how someone else solved a problem, and a great example of that comes from the October edition of Vision Systems Design. Under the delightfully alliterative heading of “Detecting Defects in Dinnerware” (October 1^st, 2011,) comes a highly detailed description of a sophisticated inspection system.

I don’t want to steal author Dan Milkie’s thunder, (or VSD’s advertising revenue,) by repeating the story here, but let me explain why you should take a look.

The article describes an inspection system developed by Coleman Technologies of Newton Square, Pennsylvania, that performs both 3D and linescan imaging. There’s lots of detail on how both are done, including an excellent description of the image processing performed. If you have any interest at all in surface flaw detection algorithms, this should be a must-read. If you visit Coleman’s website you’ll also be able to view a movie of the system running in the development shop.

Learn from what other people have done.