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Machine vision for the food industry

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Book cover Food Process Monitoring Systems

Abstract

Rapid advances in the automation of production methods have increased inspection requirements for three main reasons. First, higher production speeds require higher inspection speeds. Secondly, the implicit inspection involved in manual production and assembly is no longer present and must be accommodated elsewhere and lastly, there is an ever increasing demand by the customer for higher quality. Machines that can ‘see’ have been developed for a variety of tasks that involve inspecting and manipulating industrial artefacts. This chapter discusses some of the problems faced by the food industry and possible solutions using machine vision systems. Machine vision is defined by the Machine Vision Association of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers as,

‘The use of devices for optical non-contact sensing to automatically receive and interpret an image of a real scene in order to obtain information and/or control machines or processes.’

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Chan, J.P., Batchelor, B.G. (1993). Machine vision for the food industry. In: Pinder, A.C., Godfrey, G. (eds) Food Process Monitoring Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-2139-6_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-2139-6_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

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