Photometric stereo-based high-speed inline battery electrode inspection

Battery technology is a key component in current electric vehicle applications and an important building block for upcoming smart grid technologies. The performance of batteries depends largely on quality control during their production process. Defects introduced in the production of electrodes can lead to degraded performance and, more importantly, to short circuits in final cells, which is highly safety-critical. In this paper, we propose an inspection system architecture that can detect defects, such as missing coating, agglomerates, and pinholes on coated electrodes. Our system is able to acquire valuable production quality control metrics, like surface roughness. By employing photometric stereo techniques (PS), a shape from shading algorithm, our system surmounts difficulties that arise while optically inspecting the black to dark gray battery coating materials. We present in detail the acquisition concept of the proposed system architecture, and analyze its acquisition-, as well as, its surface reconstruction performance in experiments. We carry these out utilizing two different implementations that can operate at a production speed of up to 2000 mm/s at a resolution of 50 mu m per pixel. In this work we aim to provide a system architecture that can provide a reliable contribution to ensuring optimal performance of produced battery cells.