An object oriented vision system to control a flexible cell manufacturing SMT printed circuit boards

The engineering faculty of Brighton Polytechnic wish to provide a facility to demonstrate current concepts in engineering methodology that can also produce small quantities of SMT printed circuit boards (PCBs) for project work, research, developments in parallel machine architectures, consultancy and training. Hence, the faculty is researching into flexible electronic manufacturing which uses machine vision and AI to achieve flexibility. A generic vision system model could be used to implement a complete system, capable of performing all visual tasks, or modules for specific sub-tasks. In essence an object oriented methodology is suitable for modelling and implementing a generic vision system for various reasons which are discussed. The authors have been proceeding as follows: analysis of SMT manufacturing cycle in order to abstract manufacturing sub-tasks; domain analysis on sub-tasks; reinforce knowledge by practical experiments; investigate object oriented techniques and select OO methodology/notation; application of OOA/OOD methods to form a generic system model; iterative refinement of the model; and implement system model via OOP language and a PC/work station