Automated misplaced component inspection for printed circuit boards

In recent years, the opening of worldwide markets to many products has forced manufacturing companies to compete on a global basis. This high level of competition amongst manufacturers has led to rapid developments in the areas of computer integrated manufacturing, flexible manufacturing, agile manufacturing, and intelligent manufacturing. These developments have in turn generated a need for intelligent sensing and decision making systems capable of automatically performing many tasks traditionally executed by human beings. Visual inspection is one such task, and there is a need for effective automated visual inspection systems in today's competitive manufacturing environments. The following will discuss the advantages of implementing an intelligent visual inspection system based on natural human vision. Results from current models will also be presented. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.