A vision-based system for inspecting painted slates

Purpose – This paper describes the development of a novel automated vision system used to detect the visual defects on painted slates. Design/methodology/approach – The vision system that has been developed consists of two major components covering the opto-mechanical and algorithmical aspects of the system. The first component addresses issues including the mechanical implementation and interfacing the inspection system with the development of a fast image processing procedure able to identify visual defects present on the slate surface. Findings – The inspection system was developed on 400 slates to determine the threshold settings that give the best trade-off between no false positive triggers and correct defect identification. The developed system was tested on more than 300 fresh slates and the success rate for correct identification of acceptable and defective slates was 99.32 per cent for defect free slates based on 148 samples and 96.91 per cent for defective slates based on 162 samples. Practical implications – The experimental data indicates that automating the inspection of painted slates can be achieved and installation in a factory is a realistic target. Testing the devised inspection system in a factory-type environment was an important part of the development process as this enabled us to develop the mechanical system and the image processing algorithm able to perform slate inspection in an industrial environment. The overall performance of the system indicates that the proposed solution can be considered as a replacement for the existing manual inspection system. Originality/value – The development of a real-time automated system for inspecting painted slates proved to be a difficult task since the slate surface is dark coloured, glossy, has depth profile non-uniformities and is being transported at high speeds on a conveyor. In order to address these issues, the system described in this paper proposed a number of novel solutions including the illumination set-up and the development of multi-component image-processing inspection algorithm

A machine vision system for quality grading of painted slates

The major aim of this chapter is to detail the technology associated with a novel industrial inspection system that is able to robustly identify the visual defects present on the surface of painted slates. The development of a real-time automated slate inspection system proved to be a challenging task since the surface of the slate is painted with glossy dark colours, the slate is characterised by depth profile non-uniformities and it is transported at the inspection line via high-speed conveyors. In order to implement an industrial compliant system, in our design we had to devise a large number of novel solutions including the development of a full customised illumination set-up and the development of flexible image-processing procedures that can accommodate the large spectrum of visual defects that can be present on the slate surface and the vibrations generated by the slate transport system. The developed machine vision system has been subjected to a thorough robustness evaluation and the reported experimental results indicate that the proposed solution can be used to replace the manual procedure that is currently used to grade the painted slates in manufacturing environments

PANEL RESEARCH ON POVERTY IN IRELAND. ESRI Working Paper No. 14, October 1989

This paper attempts to describe the major research project on Poverty and related issues on which we at the ESRI have been working for the past four years. This project forms part of the EC-funded co-ordinated Research Project on Poverty which Professor Deleeck, the co-ordinator, has discussed in the previous paper. I trust that my description of the Irish experiences. both positive and negative, with this type of inquiry will help to elucidate the contribution which such studies can make to our understanding of poverty in Europe today and suggest guidelines for the conduct of such research in the future. I hope that my comments will complement those of Professor Deleeck by sketching the overall approach to the analysis of poverty adopted by one of the countries involved

POVERTY AND TIME: PERSPECTIVES ON THE DYNAMICS OF POVERTY. General Research Series Paper No. 166, December 1994

The ESRI’s 1987 Survey of Income Distribution, Poverty and Use of State Services has served as the basis for a lengthy series of studies of poverty and related topics in Ireland. The present study extends that research by exploiting the wealth of data in the survey), which can throw light on the dynamics of resources, income and poverty. To understand why some people are trapped in poverty while others escape from it, why low income has a much more immediate impact on living standards for some households than others, and why some people are at much higher risk of poverty than others, one needs to look at socio-economic background, acquisition of education and skills, labour market experiences, and the build-up of savings versus debts over a long period. By doing so, our understanding of poverty and how best to design anti-poverty policy is significantly enhanced

Repeatable Reverse Engineering for the Greater Good with PANDA

We present PANDA, an open-source tool that has been purpose-built to support whole system reverse engineering. It is built upon the QEMU whole system emulator, and so analyses have access to all code executing in the guest and all data. PANDA adds the ability to record and replay executions, enabling iterative, deep, whole system analyses. Further, the replay log files are compact and shareable, allowing for repeatable experiments. A nine billion instruction boot of FreeBSD, e.g., is represented by only a few hundred MB. Further, PANDA leverages QEMU's support of thirteen different CPU architectures to make analyses of those diverse instruction sets possible within the LLVM IR. In this way, PANDA can have a single dynamic taint analysis, for example, that precisely supports many CPUs. PANDA analyses are written in a simple plugin architecture which includes a mechanism to share functionality between plugins, increasing analysis code re-use and simplifying complex analysis development. We demonstrate PANDA's effectiveness via a number of use cases, including enabling an old but legitimate version of Starcraft to run despite a lost CD key, in-depth diagnosis of an Internet Explorer crash, and uncovering the censorship activities and mechanisms of a Chinese IM client

Copper Oxidation through Nucleation Sites of Chemical Vapor Deposited Graphene

We investigate the nucleation defect-triggered oxidation of Cu covered by CVD graphene during postannealing in air. The results reveal that different growth conditions may induce imperfect nucleation of graphene, and cause creation of defects near the nucleation point such as pin holes and amorphous carbon. These defects would serve as a pathway for the diffusion of O₂ during thermal annealing, allowing oxidation of Cu to progress gradually from the nucleation center toward the growth edge. The oxidation process follows the graphene morphology closely; the shape of the oxidized area of Cu has a striking resemblance to that of the graphene flakes. Our work demonstrates that inferior graphene nucleation in CVD processes can compromise the oxidation resistance of a graphene-coated Cu substrate, and indirectly reveal the structure and integrity of graphene, which is of fundamental importance for the quality monitoring and control of graphene growth, for understanding the mechanisms of graphene nucleation and growth, and has implications for graphene’s use in electronic and passivation applications

Providing supportive care to cancer patients: a study on inter-organizational relationships

Background: Supportive cancer care (SCC) has historically been provided by organizations that work independently and possess limited inter-organizational coordination. Despite the recognition that SCC services must be better coordinated, little research has been done to examine inter-organizational relationships that would enable this goal. <br><br> Objective: The purpose of this study was to describe relationships among programs that support those affected by cancer. Through this description the study objective was to identify the optimal approach to coordinating SCC in the community. <br><br> Methods: Senior administrators in programs that provided care to persons and their families living with or affected by cancer participated in a personal interview. Setting: South-central Ontario, Canada. Study population: administrators from 43 (97%) eligible programs consented to participate in the study. <br><br> Results: Network analysis revealed a diffuse system where centralization was greater in operational than administrative activities. A greater number of provider cliques were present at the operational level than the administrative level. Respondents identified several priorities to improve the coordination of cancer care in the community including: improving standards of care; establishing a regional coordinating body; increasing resources; and improving communication between programs. <br><br> Conclusion: Our results point to the importance of developing a better understanding on the types of relationships that exist among service programs if effective integrated models of care are to be developed

Quality grading of painted slates using texture analysis

This paper details the development of an automated vision-based solution for identification of paint and substrate defects on painted slates. The developed vision system consists of two major components. The first component of the system addresses issues including the mechanical implementation and interfacing the inspection system with the sensing and optical equipment. The second component involves the development of an image processing algorithm that is able to identify the visual defects present on the slate surface. The process of imaging the slate proved to be very challenging as the slate surface is darkly coloured and presents depth non-uniformities. Hence, a key issue for this inspection system was to devise an adequate illumination system that was able to accommodate challenges including the slates’ surface depth non-uniformities and vibrations generated by the conveying system. The visual defects are detected using a novel texture analysis solution where the greyscale (tonal characteristics) and texture information are embedded in a composite model. The developed inspection system was tested for robustness and experimental results are presented