Weld Bead Width and Height Measurement Using RANSAC

The weld bead quality is usually assessed by measuring the bead width and height. The surface points of the weld bead measured by a laser vision sensor can provide the structure of the bead, but it is difficult to extract the bead width and height using a threshold on the surface points. This work investigates using RANSAC (random sample consensus) to fit multiple linear models (straight lines) into the surface points data measured by the laser vision sensor and then the width and height of the weld bead can be obtained by the points of the intersections of the straight lines. Experimental results show that the linear models can be estimated by the RANSAC algorithm and the bead width and height can be automatically measured. The results are close to the manually measured bead width and height.