Tire visual inspection by active image sensing and smart feature extraction

In this paper, we propose a new visual inspection method that can analyze the exterior surface of rubber tires with the light stripe projection. Image sensing of the tire surface was implemented by setting the tire on the rotating table so that the normal pattern of the tire surface could be suppressed. The proposed method detects the exterior thin defect after removing three kinds of uneven circularities due to the actual shape of tire, the eccentricity of rotating table and the inconsistency between these two rotating centers. Thus, in this research, we realized a visual inspection method by transforming three-dimensional shape of tire surface into two-dimensional image information through the analysis of light stripe images.