Automatic Insertion of an Endoscope into Narrow Holes of Metal Parts using Image Processing

Abstract

This paper discusses automatic insertion of an endoscope into narrow holes of metal parts. The endoscope is attached to the hand of a robot arm. Using image processing of the image obtained from the endoscope and using fine-tuning of the position, the robot accurately inserts the endoscope without contacting the metal parts. In the detection of the holes, we use a two-stage mask treatment of the image in order to automatically obtain the center of gravity of the holes. Furthermore, we also consider the inclination of the roll angle of the endoscope.