Machine condition monitoring using omnidirectional thermal imaging system

This paper proposed an efficient omnidirectional thermal imaging system for machine condition monitoring. In this thermal imaging system, the omnidirectional scenes in a machine room, production plant, pump house, laboratory, etc within a factory site are first captured using a thermal camera attached to a custom made hyperbolic IR (infrared radiation) reflected mirror. The captured scenes with some machines to be monitored are then fed into a laptop computer for image processing and alarm purposes. Log-polar mapping is proposed to map the captured omnidirectional thermal image into panoramic image, hence providing the observer or image processing tools a complete wide angle of view. A simple and effective machine condition monitoring algorithm is also designed for monitored the normal/overheat condition for machines. The observed significances of this new proposed omnidirectional thermal imaging system include: it can cover a wide angle of view (360° omnidirectional), using minimum hardware, low cost and the output thermal images are with higher data compression. Experimental results show that the proposed thermal imaging system achieves high accuracy in monitoring machine condition.