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Title:	Computer Vision Hardware System for Automating Rough Mills of Furniture Plants
Author(s):	Conners, Richard W.; Ng, Chong T.; Drayer, Thomas H.; Tront, Joe G.; Kline, D. Earl; Gatchell, C.J.
Date:	1990
Source:	SPIE. Vol. 1293: 776-787.
Description:	The rough mill of a hardwood furniture or fixture plant is the place where dried lumber is cut into the rough parts that will be used in the rest of the manufacturing process. Approximately a third of the cost of operating the rough mill is the cost of the raw material. Hence any increase in the number of rough parts produced from a given volume of raw material can markedly affect profit margins of a company. To automate this initial cutup requires a computer vision system that can locate and identify surface defects on boards. This paper describes continuing research aimed at developing such a vision system. An important part of this research activity is the design effort going into creating a prototype hardware system, a system that will be able to scan variable width, variable length hardwood boards at industrial speeds of two to three linear feet per second. This system is being designed to handle full length boards up to sixteen feet long. The components of the prototype are a materials handling system, an imaging system, an image processing hardware system, and a software system for performing the necessary recognition tasks and for performing all the necessary control functions. The design of each of these components will be described with the emphasis placed on hardware development.
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