Deep Learning Based Real-Time Painting Surface Inspection Algorithm for Autonomous Inspection Drone

A deep learning based real-time painting surface inspection algorithm is proposed herein, designed for developing an autonomous inspection drone. The painting surface inspection is usually conducted manually. However, the manual inspection has a limitation in obtaining accurate data for correct judgement on the surface because of human error and deviation of individual inspection experiences. The best method to replace manual surface inspection is the vision-based inspection method with a camera, using various image processing algorithms. Nevertheless, the visual inspection is difficult to apply to surface inspection due to diverse appearances of material, hue, and lightning effects. To overcome technical limitations, a deep learning-based pattern recognition algorithm is proposed, which is specialized for painting surface inspections. The proposed algorithm functions in real time on the embedded board mounted on an autonomous inspection drone. The inspection results data are stored in the database and used for training the deep learning algorithm to improve performance. The various experiments for pre-inspection of painting processes are performed to verify real-time performance of the proposed deep learning algorithm. KCI Citation Count: 0