A real-time vision system for SMT automation

This paper describes the design and implementation of a real-time, high-precision vision system and its application to SMT(surface mounting technology) automation. The vision system employs a 32 bit MC68030 as a main processor, and consists of image acquisition unit. DSP56001 DSP based vision processor, and several algorithmically dedicated hardware modules. The image acquisition unit provides 512*480*8 bit image for high-precision vision tasks. The DSP vision processor and hardware modules, such as histogram extractor and feature extractor, are designed for a real-time excution of vision algorithms. Especially, the implementation of multi-processing architecture based on DSP vision processors allows us to employ more sophisticated and flexible vision algorithms for real-time operation. The developed vision system is combined with an Adept Robot system to form a complete SMD system. It has been found that the vision guided SMD assembly system is able to provide a satisfactory performance for SND automation.