Machine Vision Technology- Applications in the Automotive Industry

Machine vision systems are becoming an important part of the automotive manufacturing process with applications ranging from inspection through to process monitoring and control. The technology is indeed becoming vital to maintaining and enhancing the quality associated with each component from the smallest assembly to the entire vehicle body.

This paper will examine two machine vision applications in the automotive industry. These installations have been recently developed to satisfy the needs of ensuring that the engine assembly process guarantees the highest standards of product quality.

The first application discussed in this paper, describes how machine vision is being used to verify the ‘K’ Series engine valve timing gear, prior to undertaking a series of computer controlled automatic tests. The second case study describes an alpha-numeric character recognition system which is central to the selective assembly of bearing shells of the ‘K’ Series engine.