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10 Oct 2024
Novel method for surface flaw detection on glossy and flat materials impressed the jury, out of more than 60 entries.
During this week’s VISION show in Stuttgart, Germany, the event’s VISION Award was decided upon by a panel of judges, after their consideration of more than 60 entries from the biggest ever edition of the two-yearly expo. The award worth €3,000, presented on October 9th, was won by Toshiba Teli Corp. for its development called OneShotBRDF™ Technology: Revolutionizing Surface Flaw Detection on Glossy and Flat Materials.Jury member Dr. Chris Yates from Vision Ventures commented, “The VISION Award does not distinguish between an innovative component or an innovative product. Both are treated equally. The award is presented solely on the basis of an overall innovation and effect – two areas in which the entry from Toshiba Teli certainly scored high marks.”
Yates also stated the reasons why Toshiba Teli came out on top despite the strong field. “The jury was impressed by the new technical approach for detecting very fine scratches and irregularities, especially on glassy or highly polished surfaces. Many products nowadays have such surfaces, often with extremely high demands on their quality.
‘Simple but sensitive’
“The winning entry in the VISION Award offers a solution which is simple enough to be used by lay persons, but sensitive enough to detect flaws measuring up to a few microns,” he said. The Toshiba Teli system can also be used in a new application, such as to evaluate surface roughness. With materials such as paints and coatings where the microstructure of the surface can vary depending on the application process, roughness changes are made visible as color differences.
The VISION jury determined that the technology is not only a new optical process, but that it also does not require any software processing in order to increase the visibility of hard to detect material flaws which are known to be difficult to map. “This feature shows that the technology can be implemented in production systems or inline systems and provides an immediate picture of all flaws. The VISION Award jury congratulates the team from Toshiba Teli and looks forward to the further development of the technology," said Yates.
“The motivation for developing this Surface Flow Detection Scope came from the various inspection consultations we received from our customers,” commented Shinichi Itokawa, Board Member, Chief Technology Executive and Director of Machine Vision Camera, at Toshiba Teli. “There were many cases where even scratches that could be identified by the eyes of skilled technicians could not be detected by conventional machine vision systems,” he added.
Shortlisted entrants
Besides the winner, the following entries made the short list:
All five companies had the opportunity to present their innovations today to an interested audience and the media during a one-hour session on the Forum stage. The VISION Award is sponsored by the British trade journal Imaging and Machine Vision Europe, whose Publishing Manager Warren Clark chaired the Award presentation ceremony.
At the end of the presentations, Yates concluded, “Innovative combinations of optical elements and software have been used to create powerful new sensing capabilities in each of the entries from PxE Imaging, Toshiba Teli, and AIT. Expanding the scope of what can be measured and inspected by vision technology is a key driver of growth, and each of these innovations highlights an attractive new direction.
“A modular design and deployment philosophy is central to the hybrid switch from Murrelektronik and also the AI vision system of AiRob. Scalable or distributed solution architectures can offer strong benefits to end users, typically reducing maintenance and roll-out costs. Automated quality control of manual operations is also a complex task, but one where AI vision offers a technical solution as shown in the AiRob entry.”
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