Matsushita Electric Works, Ltd.

Ryosuke Mitaka

Kazunari Yoshimura

Kuninori Nakamura

Yoshimasa Fujiwara

Hiroyuki Ikebuchi

Yasuyuki Yuki

An image processing process disposes a television (TV) camera for observing a direct reflection of an incident light in a direction substantially coinciding with rolling direction of such detection object as a laminating substrate or the like, and observes a direct reflection component of the light with mutual positional relationship between the TV camera, object and a light source varied. Measuring thus sequentially the brightness with the angle of incident light varied, a lighting angle at which the brightness of reflection is the largest, that is, an incident angle of direct reflection light is obtained with respect to respective measuring points on the object, and an image representing a distribution of incident angles of the direction reflection light can be obtained by obtaining the incident angles of the direct reflection light with respect to the whole points on the detection object.

Image processing process

The identity of an object is determined by obtaining an image of the objective shape (e.g., by a camera), obtaining from that image an optimum objective shape representative of the object, and comparing the optimum objective shape with a known shape model of the object. The shape model is represented as a plurality of nodal points interconnected by line segments. The optimum objective shape is selected from a number of objective shapes each comprised of a row of dots having the same number of nodal points as the shape model. Each objective shape is compared with the shape model on the basis of (i) the proximity of the dots of the objective shape to the line segments of the shape model, (ii) the length of the dot segments with respect to the lengths of respective line segments, and (iii) the inclinations of the dot segments with respect to the inclinations of the line segments. The objective shape having the closest similarity to (i.e. smallest deviation from) the shape model is selected as the optimum objective shape to be compared with the shape model for identifying the object.

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Kadoma, Japan

Ryosuke Mitaka