Abstract: A method for accurately placing a surface mounting device (SMD) with a vacuum nozzle analyzes a video image of the SMD to locate the SMD leads and compute corrections. The positions of the lead centers are processed to determine the translation and rotation of the SMD relative to a desired location. The position of the SMD centroid is transformed from an image-referenced coordinate system to a space-referenced coordinate system. The SMD rotation relative to a desired orientation is derived from the slope of a line drawn through colinear SMD leads.

Abstract: A method and apparatus is provided for controlling the laser cutting of a laser beam machine by image processing techniques. A photographing device is provided to photograph a pattern or material object and to obtain a pattern image. According to the pattern, an article is cut by the laser beam machine. The photographed pattern image is digitized and stored in an image processing card. In turn, by using image processing techniques, the digitized pattern image is thresholded, and contours and/or skeletons are extracted therefrom. Each of the extracted contours and/or skeletons is linked point by point to form a series of characteristic points, and the linked lines are stored in a memory device of a microcomputer. The linked lines are replaced by a plurality of vector points in a curve approximation process, and the vector points for each linked line form a series of line vector data.