AUTOMATED WHEEL STUD DETECTION

English

1.AUTOMATED WHEEL STUD DETECTION

Detect the presence or absence of wheel bolts on complex, reflective wheels

Wheel studs, or wheel bolts, screw into hubs and project through the wheel, to present a threaded section onto which a lug nut is later tightened, holding the wheel on the hub. A missing stud must be caught before the wheel proceeds to lug nut installation and tightening.

Automotive wheels vary widely in design and are often of highly reflective metal, creating a confusing visual environment. Depending on design, the wheel studs can be protruding, or set deeply in a cup. All of this makes it difficult to program conventional machine vision to automatically detect wheel studs at various angles under a range of possible lighting conditions.

Cognex Deep Learning reliably verifies the correct assembly of wheel bolts. The part location tool is trained using sample images of each stud from various positions and angles. After that, it can reliably identify the presence or absence of each wheel stud within the complex and confusing visual field, confirming that the right number of studs are in the right positions on the wheel.