Image processing method for the improvement of visibility of adhesive path defects

The increase of interest in adhesive joints is strongly connected with simple joint creation, high joint strength and its flexibility. Due to this, assurance of high-quality joints in many responsible applications is now a vital task. Because of the automatization of joint creation, autonomous vision systems are sometimes used for the control of adhesive path quality. There is a number of environmental obstacles that limit the applicability of simple off-the-shelf systems. The aim of the research is to develop an image processing method which could be applied for the enhancement of visibility of adhesive path features for further application in an adhesive path quality control algorithm implemented in a robot vision system. The solution of the posed problem requires not only identification of adhesive path edges, but also detection of bonded part edges and suppression of different light conditions influences. To achieve appropriate image quality, a series of image processing operations like sharpening filtration, edge detection, background detection and removal, binarization and morphological operations were applied. Obtained results prove that the presented approach of image processing and analysis can be used in a robotized adhesive path quality control system.