Simulation of the illuminating scene designed for curved surface defect optical inspection

Surface defect detection is one of the essential steps of quality control. However, it is hard to illuminate defects on curved surface, as the surface properties and geometrical shapes lead to uneven background light distribution on the captured image. In this paper, all the devices used by machine vision including the sample are regarded as part of the whole illuminating scene. Models for each component of the illuminating scene are established separately and Monte Carlo ray tracing is used for generating the image. At last, a specific illuminating scene is designed for illuminating a part of curved cylinder surface. the entire surface is lightened and the non-uniform image caused by background light is greatly improved. The paper analyses how the components of illuminating scene, such as light source placement, surface properties, influence the grayscale distribution on image background and provides method to design illuminating scene for real-time accurate curved surface defect detection.