A novel mechatronic approach in machine vision for lace inspection

Flexible materials in general, and lace in particular, are hard to inspect using machine vision. Lace is especially difficult since it comprises fine and complex yarns that must be verified. For this purpose an inspection test rig using a mechatronic approach has been designed in order to simulate the production line. The main objective of this rig is to generate a 'comparable' image. This has been achieved using an active vision system which uses the acquired image as 'feedback' and hence creates a 'vision in the loop ' system.