Image processing in the woodworking industry: Challenges, solutions and platforms

Abstract

Machine vision, automatic optical inspection and image processing has been used for quality control in electronics industry for several years. Many applications have been developed for security, packaging industries and elsewhere, but machine vision and image processing is relatively new and underused area in the woodworking industry. Wood is very characteristic and although the application areas of image processing in woodworking industries are endless, the processing methods are rather complex. This paper describes briefly an image processing applications mainly and currently used in woodworking industries nowadays, unsolved challenges of image processing and possible solutions. Also benefits and performance aspects of real-time low-cost low-power embedded platforms, like Texas Instruments OMAP processors with embedded ARM and DSP cores have been analyzed and discussed.