Abstract: A method and apparatus for the automatically inspecting the contours of a gear for manufacturing errors. According to the method, a gear to be inspected is imaged on an imaging surface to form a gear image. A digitized image indicative of the gear image is generated. The digitized image comprises a plurality of pixels. The pixels each have a gray value and coordinates which represent the location of the pixel within the digitized image. Each pixel is classified into a first or a second class by comparing the gray value of the pixel to a predetermined threshold value. The coordinates of pixels corresponding to the contours of the gear are determined from the classes of pixels. The manufacturing errors of the gear are calculated by comparing the coordinates of the pixels corresponding to the contours of the gear to a standard gear pattern.

Abstract: A real-time apparatus for detecting surface defects on a moving object under test comprises a high-frequency linear light source for generating linear light which is focused on a line position of the tested object, a linear CCD (charge coupled device) camera for scanning the line position and generating an image signal, an image-signal processing device for converting the analog image signal to digital image signal and further converting the digital signal to a HIGH or a LOW signal, a combination of the HIGH and LOW signals constituting constituting binary image data in the form of binary pulses, an image-storing circuit connected to the image-signal processing circuit for storing the binary image data, a defect-detecting unit for detecting if an area unit has a valid defect which meets one of a set of predetermined defect patterns or detecting statistical defects which are not valid defects but a plurality of small defects combined together still counted as defects, and a defect detecting statistic unit conn