Abstract
At present. welding of most pipes with large diameter is carried out by the manual process. Automation of the welding process is necessary f3r the sake of consistent weld quality and improvement in productivity. In this study, two vision sensors, based on the optical triangulation, were used to obtain the information for seam tracking and detecting the weld defects. Through utilization of the vision sensors, noises were removed, images and 3D information obtained and positions of the feature points detected. The aforementioned process provided the seam and leg position data, calculated the magnitude of the gap, fillet area and leg length and judged the weld defects by ISO 5817. Noises in the images were removed by using the gradient values of the laser stripe's coordinates and various feature points were detected by using an algorithm based on the iterative polygon approximation method. Since the process time is very important, all the aforementioned processes should be conducted during welding.
