Man rolling a tyre

Deep Learning based Computer Vision System for Automated Tyre Defect Detection

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As the global manufacturing industry faces the pressures of bringing to market multiple variants of the highest quality products in the shortest possible time, a shift towards AI-driven automation across all functions has become inevitable.

In quality inspection, AI-driven computer vision systems are already enabling the streamlining of the production process so that the products are compliant with the quality criteria set by the company. This in turn brings in advantages of greater efficiency, lower operational costs while enabling 24/7 production and quicker decision making.  

Global Tyre manufacturers have been one of the early adopters of AI-powered technology in various areas including quality assurance. One major application of AI here is defect detection in tyres using deep learning-based computer vision systems. Due to the nature of raw materials used in the tyre manufacturing process, tyre components may be contaminated by metallic or nonmetallic impurities (e.g., steel threads, screws, and plastic fragments), bubble, and overlap. When a vehicle with a defective tyre is run at high speeds, these defects lead to reduced lifetime or even blowout of the tyre.

Background 

The Indian tyre industry manufactures 150+ distinct types of tyres with diameters varying from 8” to 19” and width from 400mm to 1000mm for applications ranging from bikes to cranes. To add to this, they are required to detect 80+ classes of tyre defects and are constantly struggling with a dearth of trained human resources. 

Their challenges with human resources are manifold – shortage of experienced manpower, time taken in nurturing new resources to the expertise level required, person dependency in identifying the faults and repeatability as teams change. To overcome these challenges, tyre manufacturers need an automated solution for tyre quality inspection and defect detection.  

In one of our customer engagements, Ignitarium engineers discovered that the major problems to be solved, to accurately detect defects in tyres were:

  • Mimicking the manual test and integrating to the existing manufacturing and quality control process flow
  • Having a mechanical fixture which will auto adjust to the varied tyre sizes placed by an operator and also rotate so that internal and external walls of the tyre are captured in one rotation.
  • Capturing images at an optimum speed of rotation, processing, analysing and detecting the faults. 
  • Stopping at each faulty location and marking the defects on the tyre
  • Easy and safe release of the tyre

Type of defects in tyres

 Out of the 80+ classes of possible defects commonly occurring during tyre manufacturing, segregation is done to create severity sets. Various tyre manufacturers have their own specific categorisation methods based on their unique chemical recipes and mechanical manufacturing processes. Usually around 30+ of these classes are considered to be of high severity. A limited sampling of these defect classes are depicted in the images below:

Fig 1: Tyre with Defects: Left to Right: SWC – Side Wall Crack, RLC – Rim Line Crack, SWB – Side Wall Blister, Stencil number offset, Chamfer defect

Tyre Defect Detection

  A typical method of tyre quality inspection is to use X-ray machines and to use techniques like Weighted Texture Dissimilarity. However, X-ray machines require a lot of space and are very expensive. Instead, we used a RGB camera to capture images of the tyre. To solve tyre defect detection problems, instance segmentation (combination of object detection and segmentation) was chosen, so that each instance of each defect featured in the image could be identified, instead of categorizing each pixel like in semantic segmentation.

Data Generation

For data generation, images captured from multiple tyres with already identified and marked defects were used. A 1080p resolution camera was used to capture videos of faulty and ‘good’ images. Image capture was done from various angles to improve generalisation.

Data Preparation

Data preparation is the process of cleaning and transforming raw data prior to processing and analysis. It is an important step prior to processing and often involves labelling data, reformatting data and making corrections to data. The data was collected by dumping frames from several generated videos. Then the defect portions within the region of interest (ROI) were labelled using labelling tools like LabelMe.

Instance Segmentation

Instance segmentation is a technique in which an object is detected and then masked at an individual pixel level. It combines 1) Object detection, in which each individual object in a frame is classified and localized and 2. Semantic segmentation in which each pixel is segregated into pre-defined classes. Instance segmentation allows a label to be attached to each pixel of an image.

Mask-RCNN

Mask-RCNN is a deep neural network that addresses instance segmentation problems in computer vision. Mask R-CNN is a combination of two well-known network topologies –  Faster R-CNN and a Fully Connected Network (FCN). Mask-RCNN follows a 2-step process. In the first step, for each input image, proposals are generated about the regions where an object might exist. In the second step, the class of the object is predicted and a pixel level mask is generated for the object based on the proposal generated from the first step. 

[Source Link]

Implementation

We build our inference pipeline using a customized variant of Mask-RCNN. The base Keras implementation can be found at https://github.com/matterport/Mask_RCNN.git and the corresponding reference paper can be found at https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.06870.pdf 

Inference Time

Inference time of the un-optimized model is listed in the following table. 

Architecture Environment CPUTimings GPU Timings(Quadro P4000)
Mask-RCNN Keras-TF
(640*480)
5 sec/image 3sec/image

With model optimization techniques, the per image latency can be reduced to less than 150ms.

Accuracy

Our customized model was able to achieve a detection accuracy of 96%.

Conclusion

This R&D effort to detect defects in tyres indicates that it is possible to achieve significant automation of the tyre quality inspection process. In a practical system, where high inspection throughput is mandatory, an automated inspection jig would be called for. This would include multiple cameras to simultaneously view the outer and inner surfaces of the tyre, a motor assembly to rotate the tyre 360 degrees and a control system that can synchronize the tyre movement, image capture and detection. 

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    SANJAY JAYAKUMAR

    Co-founder & CEO

     

    Founder and Managing director of Ignitarium, Sanjay has been responsible for defining Ignitarium’s core values, which encompass the organisation’s approach towards clients, partners, and all internal stakeholders, and in establishing an innovation and value-driven organisational culture.

     

    Prior to founding Ignitarium in 2012, Sanjay spent the initial 22 years of his career with the VLSI and Systems Business unit at Wipro Technologies. In his formative years, Sanjay worked in diverse engineering roles in Electronic hardware design, ASIC design, and custom library development. Sanjay later handled a flagship – multi-million dollar, 600-engineer strong – Semiconductor & Embedded account owning complete Delivery and Business responsibility.

     

    Sanjay graduated in Electronics and Communication Engineering from College of Engineering, Trivandrum, and has a Postgraduate degree in Microelectronics from BITS Pilani.

     

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      RAMESH EMANI Board Member

      RAMESH EMANI

      Board Member

      Ramesh was the Founder and CEO of Insta Health Solutions, a software products company focused on providing complete hospital and clinic management solutions for hospitals and clinics in India, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa. He raised Series A funds from Inventus Capital and then subsequently sold the company to Practo Technologies, India. Post-sale, he held the role of SVP and Head of the Insta BU for 4 years. He has now retired from full-time employment and is working as a consultant and board member.

       

      Prior to Insta, Ramesh had a 25-year-long career at Wipro Technologies where he was the President of the $1B Telecom and Product Engineering Solutions business heading a team of 19,000 people with a truly global operations footprint. Among his other key roles at Wipro, he was a member of Wipro's Corporate Executive Council and was Chief Technology Officer.

       

      Ramesh is also an Independent Board Member of eMIDs Technologies, a $100M IT services company focused on the healthcare vertical with market presence in the US and India.

       

      Ramesh holds an M-Tech in Computer Science from IIT-Kanpur.

      ​Manoj Thandassery

      VP – Sales & Business Development

      Manoj Thandassery is responsible for the India business at Ignitarium. He has over 20 years of leadership and business experience in various industries including the IT and Product Engineering industry. He has held various responsibilities including Geo head at Sasken China, Portfolio head at Wipro USA, and India & APAC Director of Sales at Emeritus. He has led large multi-country teams of up to 350 employees. Manoj was also an entrepreneur and has successfully launched and scaled, via multiple VC-led investment rounds, an Edtech business in the K12 space that was subsequently sold to a global Edtech giant.
      An XLRI alumnus, Manoj divides his time between Pune and Bangalore.

       

      MALAVIKA GARIMELLA​

      General Manager - Marketing

      A professional with a 14-year track record in technology marketing, Malavika heads marketing in Ignitarium. Responsible for all branding, positioning and promotional initiatives in the company, she has collaborated with technical and business teams to further strengthen Ignitarium's positioning as a key E R&D services player in the ecosystem.

      Prior to Ignitarium, Malavika has worked in with multiple global tech startups and IT consulting companies as a marketing consultant. Earlier, she headed marketing for the Semiconductor & Systems BU at Wipro Technologies and worked at IBM in their application software division.

      Malavika completed her MBA in Marketing from SCMHRD, Pune, and holds a B.E. degree in Telecommunications from RVCE, Bengaluru.

       

      PRADEEP KUMAR LAKSHMANAN

      VP - Operations

      Pradeep comes with an overall experience of 26 years across IT services and Academia. In his previous role at Virtusa, he played the role of Delivery Leader for the Middle East geography. He has handled complex delivery projects including the transition of large engagements, account management, and setting up new delivery centers.

      Pradeep graduated in Industrial Engineering and Management, went on to secure an MBA from CUSAT, and cleared UGN Net in Management. He also had teaching stints at his alma mater, CUSAT, and other management institutes like DCSMAT. A certified P3O (Portfolio, Program & Project Management) from the Office of Government Commerce, UK, Pradeep has been recognized for key contributions in the Management domain, at his previous organizations, Wipro & Virtusa.

      In his role as the Head of Operations at Ignitarium, Pradeep leads and manages operational functions such as Resource Management, Procurement, Facilities, IT Infrastructure, and Program Management office.

       

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      Prior to Ignitarium, Sona has had held diverse HR responsibilities at Litmus7, Cognizant and Wipro.

       

      Sona graduated in Commerce from St. Xaviers College and did her MBA in HR from PSG College of Technology.

       

      ASHWIN RAMACHANDRAN

      Vice President - Sales

      As VP of Sales, Ashwin is responsible for Ignitarium’s go-to-market strategy, business, client relationships, and customer success in the Americas. He brings in over a couple of decades of experience, mainly in the product engineering space with customers from a wide spectrum of industries, especially in the Hi-Tech/semiconductor and telecom verticals.

       

      Ashwin has worked with the likes of Wipro, GlobalLogic, and Mastek, wherein unconventional and creative business models were used to bring in non-linear revenue. He has strategically diversified, de-risked, and grown his portfolios during his sales career.

       

      Ashwin strongly believes in the customer-first approach and works to add value and enhance the experiences of our customers.

       

      AZIF SALY Director – Sales

      AZIF SALY

      Vice President – Sales & Business Development

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      Azif handled key accounts and sales process initiatives at Sankalp Semiconductors. Azif has pursued entrepreneurial interests in the past and was associated with multiple start-ups in various executive roles. His start-up was successful in raising seed funds from Nokia, India. During his tenure at Nokia, he played a key role in driving product evangelism and customer success functions for the multimedia division.

       

      At Wipro, he was involved in customer engagement with global customers in APAC and US.

       

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      RAJU KUNNATH

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      Raju graduated in Electronics Engineering from Model Engineering College, Cochin and has an Executive Post Graduate Program (EPGP) in Strategy and Finance from IIM Kozhikode.

       

      PRADEEP SUKUMARAN Vice President – Business Strategy & Marketing

      PRADEEP SUKUMARAN

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      At Ignitarium, he was previously part of the sales and marketing team with a special focus on generating a sales pipeline for Vision Intelligence products and services, working with worldwide field sales & partner ecosystems in the U.S  Europe, and APAC.

      Prior to joining Ignitarium in 2017, Pradeep was Senior Solutions Architect at Open-Silicon, an ASIC design house. At Open-Silicon, where he spent a good five years, Pradeep was responsible for Front-end, FPGA, and embedded SW business development, marketing & technical sales and also drove the IoT R&D roadmap. Pradeep started his professional career in 2000 at Sasken, where he worked for 11 years, primarily as an embedded multimedia expert, and then went on to lead the Multimedia software IP team.

      Pradeep is a graduate in Electronics & Communication from RVCE, Bangalore.

       

      SUJEET SREENIVASAN Vice President – Embedded

      SUJEET SREENIVASAN

      Vice President – Automotive Technology

       

      Sujeet is responsible for driving innovation in Automotive software, identifying Automotive technology trends and advancements, evaluating their potential impact, and development of solutions to meet the needs of our Automotive customers.

      At Ignitarium, he was previously responsible for the growth and P&L of the Embedded Business unit focusing on Multimedia, Automotive, and Platform software.

      Prior to joining Ignitarium in 2016, Sujeet has had a career spanning more than 16 years at Wipro. During this stint, he has played diverse roles from Solution Architect to Presales Lead covering various domains. His technical expertise lies in the areas of Telecom, Embedded Systems, Wireless, Networking, SoC modeling, and Automotive. He has been honored as a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at Wipro and has multiple patents granted in the areas of Networking and IoT Security.

      Sujeet holds a degree in Computer Science from Government Engineering College, Thrissur.

       

      RAJIN RAVIMONY Distinguished Engineer

      RAJIN RAVIMONY

      Distinguished Engineer

       

      At Ignitarium, Rajin plays the role of Distinguished Engineer for complex SoCs and systems. He's an expert in ARM-based designs having architected more than a dozen SoCs and played hands-on design roles in several tens more. His core areas of specialization include security and functional safety architecture (IEC61508 and ISO26262) of automotive systems, RTL implementation of math intensive signal processing blocks as well as design of video processing and related multimedia blocks.

       

      Prior to Ignitarium, Rajin worked at Wipro Technologies for 14 years where he held roles of architect and consultant for several VLSI designs in the automotive and consumer domains.

       

      Rajin holds an MS in Micro-electronics from BITS Pilani.

       

      SIBY ABRAHAM Executive Vice President, Strategy

      SIBY ABRAHAM

      Executive Vice President, Strategy

       

      As EVP, of Strategy at Ignitarium, Siby anchors multiple functions spanning investor community relations, business growth, technology initiatives as well and operational excellence.

       

      Siby has over 31 years of experience in the semiconductor industry. In his last role at Wipro Technologies, he headed the Semiconductor Industry Practice Group where he was responsible for business growth and engineering delivery for all of Wipro’s semiconductor customers. Prior to that, he held a vast array of crucial roles at Wipro including Chief Technologist & Vice President, CTO Office, Global Delivery Head for Product Engineering Services, Business Head of Semiconductor & Consumer Electronics, and Head of Unified Competency Framework. He was instrumental in growing Wipro’s semiconductor business to over $100 million within 5 years and turning around its Consumer Electronics business in less than 2 years. In addition, he was the Engineering Manager for Enthink Inc., a semiconductor IP-focused subsidiary of Wipro. Prior to that, Siby was the Technical Lead for several of the most prestigious system engineering projects executed by Wipro R&D.

       

      Siby has held a host of deeply impactful positions, which included representing Wipro in various World Economic Forum working groups on Industrial IOT and as a member of IEEE’s IOT Steering Committee.

       

      He completed his MTech. in Electrical Engineering (Information and Control) from IIT, Kanpur and his BTech. from NIT, Calicut

       

      SUJEETH JOSEPH Chief Product Officer

      SUJEETH JOSEPH

      Chief Technology Officer

       

      As CTO, Sujeeth is responsible for defining the technology roadmap, driving IP & solution development, and transitioning these technology components into practically deployable product engineering use cases.

       

      With a career spanning over 30+ years, Sujeeth Joseph is a semiconductor industry veteran in the SoC, System and Product architecture space. At SanDisk India, he was Director of Architecture for the USD $2B Removable Products Group. Simultaneously, he also headed the SanDisk India Patenting function, the Retail Competitive Analysis Group and drove academic research programs with premier Indian academic Institutes. Prior to SanDisk, he was Chief Architect of the Semiconductor & Systems BU (SnS) of Wipro Technologies. Over a 19-year career at Wipro, he has played hands-on and leadership roles across all phases of the ASIC and System design flow.

       

      He graduated in Electronics Engineering from Bombay University in 1991.

       

      SUJITH MATHEW IYPE Co-founder & CTO

      SUJITH MATHEW IYPE

      Co-founder & COO

       

      As Ignitarium's Co-founder and COO, Sujith is responsible for driving the operational efficiency and streamlining process across the organization. He is also responsible for the growth and P&L of the Semiconductor Business Unit.

       

      Apart from establishing a compelling story in VLSI, Sujith was responsible for Ignitarium's foray into nascent technology areas like AI, ML, Computer Vision, and IoT, nurturing them in our R&D Lab - "The Crucible".

       

      Prior to founding Ignitarium, Sujith played the role of a VLSI architect at Wipro Technologies for 13 years. In true hands-on mode, he has built ASICs and FPGAs for the Multimedia, Telecommunication, and Healthcare domains and has provided technical leadership for many flagship projects executed by Wipro.

       

      Sujith graduated from NIT - Calicut in the year 2000 in Electronics and Communications Engineering and thereafter he has successfully completed a one-year executive program in Business Management from IIM Calcutta.

       

      RAMESH SHANMUGHAM Co-founder & COO

      RAMESH SHANMUGHAM

      Co-founder & CRO

      As Co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer of Ignitarium, Ramesh has been responsible for global business and marketing as well as building trusted customer relationships upholding the company's core values.

      Ramesh has over 25 years of experience in the Semiconductor Industry covering all aspects of IC design. Prior to Ignitarium, Ramesh was a key member of the senior management team of the semiconductor division at Wipro Technologies. Ramesh has played key roles in Semiconductor Delivery and Pre-sales at a global level.

      Ramesh graduated in Electronics Engineering from Model Engineering College, Cochin, and has a Postgraduate degree in Microelectronics from BITS Pilani.