Automatic Visual Inspection for Industrial Application

Quality control represents a critical function in industrial environments, ensuring that manufactured products meet strict standards and remain free from defects. In highly regulated sectors such as the pharmaceutical industry, traditional manual inspection methods remain widely used. However, these are time-consuming and prone to human error, and they lack the reliability required for large-scale operations, highlighting the urgent need for automated solutions. This is crucial for industrial applications, where environments evolve and new defect types can arise unpredictably. This work proposes an automated visual defect detection system specifically designed for pharmaceutical bottles, with potential applicability in other manufacturing domains. Various methods were integrated to create robust tools capable of real-world deployment. A key strategy is the use of incremental learning, which enables machine learning models to incorporate new, unseen data without full retraining, thus enabling adaptation to new defects as they appear, allowing models to handle rare cases while maintaining stability and performance. The proposed solution incorporates a multi-view inspection setup to capture images from multiple angles, enhancing accuracy and robustness. Evaluations in real-world industrial conditions demonstrated high defect detection rates, confirming the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

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Publication Details

Journal
Journal of Imaging
Published
2025-10-08
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/jimaging11100350
Citations
3
Primary Topic
Industrial Vision Systems and Defect Detection
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
3.73

Funders

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article

Automatic Visual Inspection for Industrial Application

Luís Vilaça, Carlos J. Costa, Tiago Costa, Pedro Carvalho et al.
3 citations
Journal of Imaging
Industrial Vision Systems and Defect Detection
3.73
article

Automatic Visual Inspection for Industrial Application

Luís Vilaça, Carlos J. Costa, Tiago Costa, Pedro Carvalho, António Ribeiro
article en
3 citations

Abstract

Quality control represents a critical function in industrial environments, ensuring that manufactured products meet strict standards and remain free from defects. In highly regulated sectors such as the pharmaceutical industry, traditional manual inspection methods remain widely used. However, these are time-consuming and prone to human error, and they lack the reliability required for large-scale operations, highlighting the urgent need for automated solutions. This is crucial for industrial applications, where environments evolve and new defect types can arise unpredictably. This work proposes an automated visual defect detection system specifically designed for pharmaceutical bottles, with potential applicability in other manufacturing domains. Various methods were integrated to create robust tools capable of real-world deployment. A key strategy is the use of incremental learning, which enables machine learning models to incorporate new, unseen data without full retraining, thus enabling adaptation to new defects as they appear, allowing models to handle rare cases while maintaining stability and performance. The proposed solution incorporates a multi-view inspection setup to capture images from multiple angles, enhancing accuracy and robustness. Evaluations in real-world industrial conditions demonstrated high defect detection rates, confirming the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Journal of ImagingVol. 11(10)
Universidade do Porto (PT), Instituto Nacional de Investigação Agrária e Veterinária (PT), Instituto Superior Politécnico Gaya (PT), INESC TEC (PT), Polytechnic Institute of Porto (PT)
European Commission
Openalex Percentile: Top 6%
Industrial Vision Systems and Defect Detection
3.73
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