Empty bottle inspector based on machine vision

A machine-vision-based empty bottle inspector is presented in this paper. The mechanical structure and electric control system are illustrated in detail. A method based on the histogram of edge points is applied for real-time determination of inspection area. For defect detection of bottle wall and bottle bottom, a derivative algorithm from Canny edge detector is proposed. In bottle finish inspection, two artificial neural networks are used for low-level inspection and high-level judgment respectively. A prototype is developed and experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of the inspector. Inspections performed by the prototype have proved the effectiveness and value of the proposed algorithms in automatic real-time inspection.