Hitachi, Ltd.

Hitachi Keiyo Engineering Co., Ltd.

Seiji Hata

Yuji Takagi

Akira Miyakawa

Kenji Suzuki

Yoshie Nishida

Masao Tsuji

Makoto Honma

Kenjiro Fujii

Sotozi Hiramoto

Makoto Ariga

Masamichi Tomita

Yasunori Shimura

Kyoichi Kawasaki

Yoshien Nishida

Shigenori Takeyoshi

Akira Ishibashi

Kenji Takeda

Takafumi Okabe

Kazuo Honma

Tadaaki Ishikawa

Takao Terabayashi

Shunji Mohri

Kichie Matsuzaki

Mitsuo Nakamura

Hiroshi Horino

Michio Takahashi

Yoshikazu Suzumura

Daisuke Katsuta

Takushi Okada

Shigemi Igarashi

Kinuyo Hagimae

Makoto Watanabe

Kenji Susuki

Masaaki Nakagima

Ryu Takizawa

Souichi Yano

Noriyoshi Arakawa

An apparatus for transporting an electronic component includes a head for holding the component when the component is picked up from a suitable storage device. The head is movable relative to a base with an imaging apparatus being fixed to the head and allowing position of the component relative to the head to be determined while the component is being transported. A movable optical component is provided on the head which, in one position, contributes to defining an optical path between the component and the imaging apparatus, and in another position, is withdrawn. A further imaging apparatus may be provided, on the base or on the head with the further imaging apparatus detecting the position of large components, if the first imaging apparatus has a narrow filed of view for small components. Alternatively, when the further imaging apparatus is on the head, the imaging apparatus may detect the position to which the component is to be transported.

Component transporting apparatus and method

Method and apparatus for detecting vertical and horizontal deformations of leads of a semiconductor device by illuminating the leads with a planar light beam and determining relative positions of the planar light beam on the leads on the basis of distribution of light rays reflected from the leads. Different lead deformations can be detected with one and the same mechanism within a short time. By applying the invention to a semiconductor device mounting apparatus, a single detector can be employed in common both for the detection of the semiconductor device position and the detection of reflections of the planar beam.

Method and apparatus for detecting deformations of leads of

A method and an apparatus for grasping surface mounted devices such as an IC or the like by the hand of the robot and automatically and accurately loading them onto the contact pattern of a printed circuit board by means of an image processor are disclosed. According to this method, a measurement line is provided onto each image pattern of the pin array of the surface mounted device and the array of the contact pattern of the board, so that it may intersect at right angles with the direction of the pattern, and each position of the pin array and the array of the contact pattern is sought from the variation of the brightness on that line. In accordance with the result thus obtained, displacement of the position and that of the rotation over the entire surfaced part and the contact pattern are sought and the operation of the robot is controlled in accordance with that information.

Method of loading surface mounted device and an apparatus therefor

A method and an apparatus for inspecting a three-dimensional surface shape and pattern of an object under inspection by images of the surface of the object, said images being formed by reflected light rays from the object illuminated by lights. The surface of the object is illuminated by first and second lights provided on the inspected surface side of the object and at different heights from the object, images of the reflected light rays from the surface of the object illuminated by the first and second lights are acquired by an imaging unit, a first image of the surface of the object illuminated by the first light and a second image of the surface of the object illuminated by the second light, both acquired by the imaging unit, are input separately, brightness values at the same pixel points of the first and the second images are subjected to a division process to obtain a value, and by using this value as the brightness value of the pixel, a third image is formed which is used for quality evaluation.

Method and apparatus for inspecting surface pattern of object

Light projectors for slit lights are so arranged that at least two slit lines developed by projecting the slit lights on a chip component or the like obliquely thereto intersect each other, and the slit lines are imaged from above the component or the like by TV cameras so as to extend horizontally in the corresponding images. The shapes of the slit lines in the images are analyzed by an image processor, to detect the state change of the chip component or the like, such as the misplacement thereof. Further, if necessary, in order to enhance the contrast of the pattern of the slit line, the slit light is projected by a stroboscopic lamp within the exposure time of the TV camera, for a short time interval which is not longer than the exposure time.

Apparatus and method for inspecting defect of mounted component with

Character recognition method and system in which a character indicated in a printed, stamped, carved or other form is two-dimensionally imaged and stored as image data and the stored image data is subjected to an image processing to recognize the character. The recognition of the character is performed in such a manner that each time the comparison of plural kinds of feature vectors extracted from the character to be recognized and a dictionary vector of each candidate character in a group of candidate characters preliminarily prepared is made for one of the plural kinds of feature vectors, a candidate character having its dictionary vector away from the extracted feature vector by a distance not smaller than a predetermined value is excluded from the candidate character group. The dictionary vector for each candidate character is defined as an average vector for a variety of fonts. A difference between the dictionary vector and the feature vector extracted from the character to be recognized is estimated by virtue of a deviation vector for the variety of fonts to produce an estimated value. The exclusion from the candidate character group is judged on the basis of the estimated values each of which is cumulatively produced each time the estimation for the difference is made.

Character recognition method and system

There are disclosed a method and an apparatus for properly recognizing the position and orientation of a whole object article from its partial shape. The method comprises the steps of first extracting an image of a partial shape from a two-dimensional picture image representing at least one portion of the object article whose position and orientation are to be recognized, then calculating at least one of a center of gravity, an intersection of straight lines and a linear equation with respect to each of the extracted feature shapes, thereby obtaining at least one feature parameter, and calculating the position and orientation of the whole object article by arbitrarily combining such feature parameters.

Method and apparatus for calculating position and orientation by

A pattern recognition apparatus for recognizing a pattern derived from image data of an outline of an object region is disclosed. The apparatus comprises means for identifying the object region from the input image data, means for extracting outline pixels of the object region, means for polygon-approximating the object region based on a position relationship among the outline pixels to determine vertex coordinates of the approximation polygon, means for determining characteristic data representing a position and an attitude of the region based on the vertex coordinates, and means for superimposing the polygon-approximated object region pattern on a dictionary pattern based on the characteristic data and, determining a common region of the patterns to determine the identity of the patterns. High speed and highly reliable pattern matching is attained.

Pattern recognition apparatus

A method and an apparatus suitably used with a visual recognition system or the like for measuring the shape of an object by the optical cutting process is disclosed in which irregularities of the reflection characteristics on the object or under an environment subjected to variations in external light are removed for measurement. A light flux parallel to a slit beam providing an optical cutting beam is irradiated on the object by an optical system. An original image not irradiated with any parallel illumination light is compared with an image obtained with a parallel beam irradiated to obtain reflection characteristics data on the object. This reflection characteristic data is used to correct an image formed at the time of irradiation of the optical cutting beam. When the optical cutting beam is irradiated, the existing image representing reflection characteristics is standardized with reference to the brightness of the optical cutting beam. The resulting data is used to correct the differential image obtained by subtraction between the image irradiated with the optical cutting beam and the original image. The reflection irregularties are thus removed for an improved measurement accuracy.

Method and apparatus for measuring optical cutting beam with parallel

A method for controlling an image processing device wherein the contour of a certain segment of an image, or pattern is polygonal-approximated so that it is represented by a row of vertex data and the row of vertex data is processed to recognize the shape of the segment. This method comprises the steps of describing an image processing procedure as a program by a programming language incorporating a group of image processing instructions, and executing this program by the image processing whereby several different image procedures can be performed for image processing according to different uses. This method also controls the image processing procedure using a program written by a programming language incorporating variables representing the structure inherent in the image data.

Method for controlling image processing device

A method and an apparatus for grasping surface mounted devices such as an IC or the like by the hand of the robot and automatically and accurately loading them onto the contact pattern of the printed board by use of an image processor are disclosed. According to this method, a measurement line is provided onto each image pattern of the pin array of the surface mounted device and the array of the contact pattern of the board, so that it may intersect at right angles with the direction of the pattern, and each position of the pin array and the array of the contact pattern is sought from the variation of the brightness on that line. In accordance with the result thus obtained, displacement of the position and that of the rotation over the entire surfaced part and the contact pattern are sought and the operation of the robot is controlled in accordance with that information.

The present invention consists in a three-dimensional vision system comprising a three-dimensional vision sensor which projects slit-like light on an object to-be-handled and which reads out a resulting slit image, an image input portion which controls the slit-like light to be lit up and put out and also controls the read-out of the slit image and which performs extraction processing of differential signals as to image signals read out, and an image processor which performs required controls concerning said image input portion and which processes image data of said image input portion; an image with the projected slit-like light and an image without it being sequentially sampled on an identical scanning line of the read-out image so as to obtain the differential image between them, thereby to extract a light segmentation line based on the projected slit-like light.

Three-dimensional vision system

A system for carrying out a cooperative control operation for a plurality of automated devices connected together in which the individual operations of the automated device can be controlled individually in accordance with a program. In the control method in this system, the controlling of various automated devices is practiced by inputting a program described in a language which has a unified system, and translating this program in accordance with the combination of the automated devices.

Method of and apparatus for controlling automated devices

A segmentation apparatus utilized in an image processing system for recognizing a pattern in an image inputted thereto includes a separate circuit for outputting logical values of m by n pixels separated from the inputted image, an encode circuit for storing in advance therein codes to be determined according to the content of an inputted pattern and for outputting a code indicating that which set of pixels is identical to the objective pixel by using as an input pattern the logical value outputted from the separate circuit, and a select circuit for selecting a label of the objective label, from the label data of neighborhood pixels already determined and the new label data assigned, in accordance with the output from the encode circuit.

Growing community of inventors

Fujisawa, Japan

Seiji Hata