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Computer Vision Solutions for Industry 4.0

The manufacturing industry has faced growing challenges in recent years. The sector is looking at a skills gap that is
about to get larger, as 22% of skilled manufacturing workers are due to retire by the end of 2025. Manufacturing and
related industries are also struggling to improve on existing inventory and supply chain management, especially in the
face of recent disruptions caused by the pandemic. Finally, manufacturing needs to keep up with customer expectations
for high-quality, reliable products at an affordable cost.
Computer vision, or CV, can alleviate the biggest challenges facing the industry. CV, a subset of artificial intelligence,
allows computers to take in information from digital images and then make decisions based on that information. When
applied correctly, this means that CV allows computers to carry out the kinds of repetitive tasks that skilled workers would
otherwise be doing. CV can improve efficiency and attention to detail while freeing up workers’ time for other tasks.
The future of industrial work is clear. Industry 4.0 will be highly automated, with faster production timelines and a smart
warehouse, allowing for rapid production and distribution of products. It will also require a highly-skilled, educated
workforce that knows how to use and operate cutting-edge technology, as well as safer workplaces so that employees can
perform at their peak. Clearly, this represents a number of changes to what has been a fairly traditional sector. Computer
vision can help the industry to bring about those changes quickly and smoothly.

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Ways Computer Vision Can Transform Manufacturing

Industry with Automation
1. Product Assembly - Computer vision applications have a major role in product and component assembly in the
manufacturing space. As a part of industry 4.0 automation, most of the manufacturing industry has been
implementing computer vision to conduct fully automated product assembly and management processes. For
example, it is widely known that close to 70% of the Tesla manufacturing process is automated. 3D modeling
designs are generated by computer-aided software. Based on these designs, the computer vision system guides
the assembly process precisely. Here computer vision systems constantly monitor and guide the robotic arms and
employees in the assembly line.

2. Defect Detection - The manufacturing industry often struggles to get 100% accuracy in detect defects in their
manufactured products, as it demands systems to monitor defects on a micro-scale (like monitoring the wrong
threading). Detecting these defects at the end of the production process or after the delivery to the client can result

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in increased production costs and leads to customer dissatisfaction. These losses are comparatively far higher
than the cost of adopting an AI-powered computer vision defect detection system.

The manufacturing industry often struggles to get 100% accuracy in detect defects in their manufactured products,
as it demands systems to monitor defects on a micro-scale (like monitoring the wrong threading). Detecting these
defects at the end of the production process or after the delivery to the client can result in increased production
costs and leads to customer dissatisfaction. These losses are comparatively far higher than the cost of adopting an
AI-powered computer vision defect detection system.

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1. 3D Vision System - A computer vision inspection system is used in a production line to carry out responsibilities
that humans struggle with. In this use case, the system uses high-resolution images to build a full 3D model of
components and their connector pins.

As components run through the manufacturing plant, the computer vision system captures various images from
different angles to generate a 3D model. These images, when combined and fed to AI algorithms, identify any
faulty threading or minor deviation from the design. This technology is very credible in manufacturing industries like
automotive, electronic circuits, oil and gas, energy, and so on.

2. Computer Vision-Guided Die Cutting - Rotary and Laser Die Cutting are the most adopted technologies in
performing die-cutting in the manufacturing process. Rotary uses hard tooling and steel blades while laser uses
high-speed laser light. Even though laser die cutting is more precise, cutting tough materials is challenging and
rotary cutting can be used to cut any material.

The manufacturing industry can deploy computer vision systems to perform rotary die cutting to be as precise as
laser cutting to cut any sort of design. Once the design pattern is fed to the computer vision system, the system will
guide the die cutting machine, be it laser or rotary cutting, to perform cutting accurately.

3. Predictive Maintenance - Some manufacturing processes happen at critical temperatures and environmental
conditions, so material degradation or corrosion is common. This results in equipment deformation. If not handled
early, this can result in severe losses and halt the manufacturing process. For this reason, manufacturers employ
corrosion engineers to ensure the health of machines and avoid corrosion as a part of predictive maintenance.
Manufacturers conduct constant monitoring of equipment manually. Computer vision systems, however, can

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constantly monitor the equipment based on various metrics. If any deviation from metrics suggests corrosion, the
computer vision systems can alert the respective managers to carry out maintenance activities proactively.

4. Safety and Security Standards - Employees in the manufacturing industry work in exceedingly dangerous
conditions, so the risk of injury is much higher. Not adhering to safety and security standards can cause serious
injury or even death. The manufacturing plants are required to abide by safety standards enforced by governing
authorities and companies that fail to adhere to these standards must face penalties.

Even though manufacturing companies have cameras installed to monitor employee movement in the plant to
ensure safety standards, it is largely a manual monitoring process where an employee must sit and constantly
monitor the video stream. The manual processes are error-prone and this error could result in serious
consequences. An AI-powered computer vision can be an appropriate solution. This application constantly monitors
the manufacturing site right from the entry point, into the site, and exit point. Even if there is a minor violation in
compliance, the system reports to a respective manager and alerts the employees too. This way, manufacturing
companies can ensure their employees adhere to safety and security standards.

In case of an active accident, the computer vision system can alert managers and staff about where the accident
happened and the intensity of the accident so the production process can be halted in that specific area and
proactively ensure the safety of employees.

1. Packaging Standards - In some manufacturing companies, it is important to count the number of manufactured
pieces before packaging them in a container. Performing this task manually can incur a lot of errors. This problem
is more prevalent in pharmaceutical and retail products. Deploying a computer vision system in the packaging
process to count the number of pieces, verifies if packaging standards are followed.

Once the items are properly packed, another use case for computer vision is inspecting any damage on the
packaging itself. It's important that products get to customers safely and in one piece. Damaged packaging risks
damage to the product inside. Computer vision systems can proactively divert any damaged packaging before
leaving the plant.

2. Barcode Analysis - Another important aspect is barcode verification. Most products have barcodes on them. The
packaging department should cross-check if the printed barcodes are accurate and readable. Cross verifying
barcodes of thousands of products manually demands a lot of human hours and is error-prone and costly.
Computer vision systems can verify barcodes easily and divert any products with faulty barcodes.

3. Inventory Management - Computer vision systems can help count stock, maintain inventory status in
warehouses, and automate and alert managers if any material required for manufacturing is below demand. The
computer vision systems can avoid human errors in counting stock.

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In massive warehouses, locating stock is difficult. With a computer vision system, based on barcode data, these
systems can help inventory managers locate products in the warehouse.

How Will Computer Vision Impact the Future of Industrial

Operations
It’s impossible to overstate the likely impact of CV on the future of manufacturing. Applications like object detection, object
tracking, activity tracking, and pose estimation are ready to disrupt the industry’s production and distribution processes.
Here are just a few of the changes that are likely to arise thanks to CV.

Greater Productivity
Today’s customers expect higher-quality products without defects, all at a low cost. In order to meet this demand, most
companies are looking for ways to boost employee productivity.
That often means monitoring employees to cut down on unscheduled downtime. This is where CV can make a huge
contribution. Half a century ago, the foreman was responsible for walking the factory floor to make sure that employees
were hard at work instead of idling. Today, a network of computing systems can be used to monitor workers in real-time
and check to see that they are all making the best use of their work time.
Some businesses have reported increases in productivity of between 10 and 12%. It’s worth noting that employees may
also experience greater job satisfaction when they are challenged at work, which may lead to a virtuous cycle of increased
productivity.

Automated Quality Control

Consumers expect reliable products that meet their standards. This means that effective quality control is crucial for the
success of any manufacturing business. Otherwise, it is impossible to win over consumers and build a base of loyal
customers.
Fortunately, computer vision can carry out quality control checks much more quickly and reliably than any human
employee. CV means no longer waiting to laboriously examine batch after batch of products after the assembly process is
over. Instead, the CV system can scan and continuously monitor products at every stage of production and can alert
employees whenever there is a problem. That means that the production line can be shut down and any issues can be
corrected before an entire line of products is ruined by a flaw in the assembly process.

Real-time Inventory Management

Successful businesses need to be able to maintain inventory control over all the raw materials used in production, as well
as the finished products stored in warehouses. When it’s carried out well, inventory management can revolutionize the
way companies do business. It can allow them to maintain the right balance of inventory, so that they always have the raw
materials needed for production on hand, without wasting funds by storing too much in warehouses. Inventory
management also means having enough finished products in warehouses to meet consumer demand at all times, even
when it fluctuates.
This is an area where CV excels and can easily outperform human employees. Inventory management is often a tedious
job, and human employees can commit careless errors while taking inventory. These kinds of errors are expensive, both
in terms of the training requirements and the cost of correcting errors. Computer vision, on the other hand, can work in a
rapid and systematic way, without careless mistakes.
Computer vision can go beyond simply tracking and recording the number of goods in warehouses. CV can flag any items
that have been misplaced or stored in the wrong locations. CV can also identify shortages in raw materials and products,
and, where applicable, can issue reports or order items to be restocked. CV can also track the movement of goods,
identifying which products are in high demand and which are less popular. This is helpful for making key decisions about
when production rates should be increased or decreased.

What is computer vision?

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The term Computer Vision (CV) is used and heard very often in artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning (DL)
applications. The term essentially means giving a computer the ability to see the world as we humans do.
Computer Vision is a field of study which enables computers to replicate the human visual system. As already mentioned
above, It’s a subset of artificial intelligence which collects information from digital images or videos and processes them to
define the attributes. The entire process involves image acquiring, screening, analysing, identifying and extracting
information. This extensive processing helps computers to understand any visual content and act on it accordingly.
Computer vision projects translate digital visual content into explicit descriptions to gather multi-dimensional data. This
data is then turned into a computer-readable language to aid the decision-making process. The main objective of this
branch of artificial intelligence is to teach machines to collect information from pixels.

Here are a few common tasks that computer vision systems can be used for:
Object classification - The system parses visual content and classifies the object on a photo/video to the
defined category. For example, the system can find a dog among all objects in the image.
Object identification - The system parses visual content and identifies a particular object on a photo/video. For
example, the system can find a specific dog among the dogs in the image.
Object tracking - The system processes video finds the object (or objects) that match search criteria and track
its movement.

How does computer vision work?

Computer vision technology tends to mimic the way the human brain works. But how does our brain solve visual object
recognition? One of the popular hypothesis states that our brains rely on patterns to decode individual objects. This
concept is used to create computer vision systems.
Computer vision algorithms that we use today are based on pattern recognition. We train computers on a massive amount
of visual data—computers process images, label objects on them, and find patterns in those objects. For example, if we
send a million images of flowers, the computer will analyze them, identify patterns that are similar to all flowers and, at the
end of this process, will create a model “flower.” As a result, the computer will be able to accurately detect whether a
particular image is a flower every time we send them pictures.
Golan Levin, in his article Image Processing and Computer Vision, provides technical details about the process that
machines follow in interpreting images.

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A digital image is an image composed of picture elements, also known as pixels, each with finite, discrete quantities of
numeric representation for its intensity or grey level. So the computer sees an image as numerical values of these pixels
and in order to recognise a certain image, it has to recognise the patterns and regularities in this numerical data.
But usually, you will find that for any colour image, there are 3 primary channels – Red, green and blue and the value of
each channel varies from 0-255. In more simpler terms we can say that a digital image is actually formed by the
combination of three basic colour channels Red, green, and blue whereas for a grayscale image we have only one
channel whose values also vary from 0-255.
In short, machines interpret images as a series of pixels, each with their own set of color values. For example, below is a
picture of Abraham Lincoln. Each pixel’s brightness in this image is represented by a single 8-bit number, ranging from 0
(black) to 255 (white). Here is a hypothetical example of how pixels form an image. The darker pixels are represented by
a number closer to the zero and lighter pixels are represented by numbers approaching one. All other colours are
represented by the numbers between 0 and 1. These numbers are what software sees when you input an image. This
data is provided as an input to the computer vision algorithm that will be responsible for further analysis and decision
making.

Color values of individual pixels are converted into a simple array of numbers used as input for a computer vision
algorithm

Pixels are accessed by their (x, y)-coordinates. The origin, (0, 0), is located at the top-left of the image. The x-
values go left-to-right (column number) and y-values go top-to-bottom (row number)

When we take a digital image, it is stored as a combination of pixels. Each pixel contains a different number of channels.
If it a grayscale image, it has only one pixel, whereas if it is a coloured image, it contains three channels: red, green and
blue.

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A digital image represented as pixels and channels

Note The channels in OpenCV is represented as 'BGR'. NOT 'RGB'

As shown in the above representation of a digital coloured image, each channel of each pixel has a value between 0 and
255. Each of these values represented in binary before a computer can understand the image.

The evolution of computer vision

Computer vision is not a new technology; the first experiments with computer vision started in the 1950s, and back then, it
was used to interpret typewritten and handwritten text. At that time, computer vision analysis procedures were relatively
simple but required a lot of work from human operators who had to provide data samples for analysis manually. As you
probably guess, it was hard to provide a lot of data when doing it manually. Plus, the computational power wasn’t good
enough, so the error margin for this analysis was pretty high.
Today, we do not have any shortage of computer power. Cloud computing, paired with robust algorithms, can help us
solve even the most complex problems. But not just the new hardware paired with sophisticated algorithms (we will review
them in the next section) is driving computer vision technology forward; the impressive amount of publicly available visual
data that we generate every day is responsible for the recent process of this technology. According to Forbes, users share
online more than three billion images daily, and this data is used to train the computer vision systems.

Deep learning revolution

To understand the recent process of computer vision technology, we need to dive into algorithms this technique relies on.
Modern computer vision relies on deep learning, a specific subset of machine learning, which uses algorithms to glean
insights from data. Machine learning, on the other hand, relies on artificial intelligence, which acts as a foundation for both
technologies (check AI design best practices to learn more about design for AI).

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Deep learning represents a more effective way to do computer vision—it uses a specific algorithm called a neural
network. The neural networks are used to extract patterns from provided data samples. The algorithms are inspired by the
human understanding of how brains function, in particular, the interconnections between the neurons in the cerebral
cortex.
At the core level of a neural network is the perceptron, the mathematical representation of a biological neuron. Similar to
biologic neurons in the cerebral cortex, it’s possible to have several layers of interconnected perceptrons. Input values
(raw data) get passed through the network created by perceptrons and end up in the output layer, which is a prediction, or
a highly educated guess about a certain object. For example, at the end of the analysis, the machine can classify an
object with X% confidence.

Machine learning uses algorithms to parse data while deep learning relies on layers of artificial neural networks
(ANN)

Where we can apply computer vision

technology
Some people think that computer vision is something from the distant future of design. Not true. Computer vision is
already integrated into many areas of our life. Below are just a few notable examples of how we use this technology
today:

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Facial recognition
Facial recognition technology is used to match photos of people’s faces to their identities. This technology is integrated
into major products that we use every day. For example, Facebook is using computer vision to identify people in photos.
Facial recognition is a crucial technology for biometric authentication. Many mobile devices available on the market today
allow users to unlock devices by showing their faces. A front face camera is used for facial recognition; mobile devices
process this image and, based on analysis, can tell whether the person who is holding a device is authorized on this
device. The beauty of this technology is that it works really fast.

Self-driving cars
Computer vision enables cars to make sense of their surroundings. A smart vehicle has a few cameras that capture
videos from different angles and send videos as an input signal to the computer vision software. The system processes
the video in real-time and detects objects like road marking, objects near the car (such as pedestrians or other cars),
traffic lights, etc. One of the most notable examples of applications of this technology is autopilot in Tesla cars.

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Agriculture
Many agricultural organizations employ computer vision to monitor the harvest and solve the common agricultural
problems such as weeds emergence or nutrient deficiency. Computer vision systems process images from satellites,
drones, or planes, and attempt to detect the problems in the early phase, which helps to avoid unnecessary financial
losses.

Healthcare
Computer Vision has tremendous uses in healthcare.
A patient’s data can have up to 250GB of data in images and records. Being able to identify, evaluate, and interpret
visuals and information like a human eye, computer vision helps doctors process an overwhelming amount of patient’s
data in a short amount of time.

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Retail
In December 2016, Amazon opened its first partially automated convenience store, AmazonGO, for its employees. In two
years, AmazonGO opened its doors to the public.
Today, AmazonGO equips other retailers to use its technology, Just Walk Out (a combination of technologies that includes
computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning), in their stores.
Just Walk Out, true to its name, allows the shopper to just walk out of a store, taking whatever, they want with them. The
shoppers neither have to stand in line nor have to pay at the store. It may sound like theft, except it is not. AmazonGO’s
Just Walk Out, is better at preventing theft than a conventional store.
While Just Walk Out is built for the customer’s ultimate shipping experience and convenience, it is also built to ensure the
shop owner/retailer’s ultimate peace of mind.

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However, the no-checkout convenience store powered by super surveillance systems does not in any way offer a 100%
guaranteed effectiveness against shoplifting, at least not the unintentional shoplifting.
Despite the weight sensors installed in the shelves, AmazonGO stores might, from time to time, accidentally miss adding
the item to the shopper’s cart if the shopper happens to take multiple yogurts at the same time. That said, every
convenience story is designed to expect and accept a certain amount of lossage.

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