JP2005255314A - Rolling measuring method and device for pipe conveyor and method for avoiding rolling - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To detect rolling amount of a pipe conveyor quantitatively in a non-contact manner to monitor and control rolling amount. <P>SOLUTION: Light is projected from two sections 22, 24 toward a joint 13 of conveyor belts from the direction which is substantially right angle to the direction of advance of the pipe conveyor 10 to detect rolling in which the conveyor belts 12 are twisted during operation. Image imaged by a fixed camera 20 at an intermediate position of light projection positions in two sections is processed to decide a joint position in the field of view. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2005,JPO&NCIPI

Description

  The present invention relates to a rolling measurement method and apparatus for a pipe conveyor for detecting rolling that the conveyor belt is twisted during operation, and a rolling avoidance method, and in particular, the amount of rolling can be quantitatively detected. The present invention relates to a rolling measurement method and apparatus for a pipe conveyor, and a rolling avoidance method using the same.

  In recent years, in order to reduce the transportation of powder, particles, crushed stones, etc., contamination of the surrounding area due to the fall of the transported material, and reduction of the processing of the falling material in the belt transport line, as shown in FIG. As shown in FIG. 2 and a cross-sectional view taken along line II-II in FIG. 1, the conveyor belt 12 is rolled into a pipe shape, and transported materials such as fluids and powders are wrapped inside and conveyed. A pipe conveyor 10 is known.

  In general, pipe conveyors are not straight lines, and there are many bent portions 11 due to equipment restrictions as shown in FIG. 1, and this causes the conveyor belt 12 to meander and twist while rotating left and right. Rolling is likely to occur. In particular, when the weather is raining, the belt itself is easy to slip, so the rate of occurrence of rolling is high. When the pipe conveyor 10 rolls, it is necessary to stop a line and adjust a roller etc., and there existed a problem that an operation rate and work efficiency were bad and productivity could not be improved.

  In addition, as a technique for detecting the amount of rolling of the pipe conveyor, Patent Document 1 is provided with a follow-up roller or the like corresponding to the rotation of the pipe conveyor, and according to the amount of axial movement of the roller, rolling by a predetermined amount or more is performed. It is described that it is detected.

JP-A-3-293209

  However, the technique described in Patent Document 1 only detects the presence or absence of meandering by a limit switch, and a technique for quantitatively measuring the rolling amount of the pipe conveyor has not been developed. This is because the pipe conveyor has a round shape and the rolling itself depends on the direction of rotation, so that the amount of rolling cannot be determined by simply detecting the edge, such as when detecting the edge of a strip.

  Therefore, in the prior art, the amount of rolling of the pipe conveyor cannot be determined quantitatively, so that it is difficult to automatically correct the rolling or analyze the rolling method.

  The present invention has been made to solve the above-mentioned conventional problems, and a first object is to quantitatively detect the rolling amount of a pipe conveyor in a non-contact manner.

  Another object of the present invention is to avoid the rolling of the pipe conveyor.

  The present invention relates to a pipe conveyor rolling measurement method for detecting the rolling of a conveyor belt, and projects light from two points from a direction substantially perpendicular to the traveling direction of the pipe conveyor toward a joint of the conveyor belt. The first problem is solved by performing image processing on an image captured by the fixed camera in the middle of the two light projection positions and determining the position of the joint in the field of view.

  The present invention also relates to a pipe conveyor rolling measuring device for detecting a conveyor belt rolling, a fixed camera installed at a position where a joint of the conveyor belt is photographed, and a visual field of the fixed camera. From a direction substantially perpendicular to the direction of travel toward the joint of the conveyor belt, a projector that projects light from two locations sandwiching the fixed camera, and image processing of the video captured by the fixed camera, Similarly, the image processing means for determining the position of the seam in the field of view solves the first problem.

  The present invention also solves the second problem by controlling the alignment roller so that the position of the conveyor belt joint detected by the rolling measurement method is constant.

  According to the present invention, it is possible to quantitatively detect the rolling amount of a pipe conveyor in a non-contact manner. Therefore, by monitoring the rolling amount, an alarm is output when the rolling exceeds the set range, the method of rolling is analyzed, and the rolling amount is automatically adjusted using the detection data. Rolling can be avoided.

  Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings.

  The first embodiment of the present invention is, for example, a CCD camera installed in a position where the joint 13 of the conveyor belt 12 is photographed as shown in FIG. 3 in the pipe conveyor 10 as shown in FIGS. 1 and 2. The fixed camera 20 and two places (here) that sandwich the fixed camera 20 in the visual field of the fixed camera 20 from the direction substantially perpendicular to the traveling direction of the pipe conveyor toward the joint 13 of the conveyor belt 12 In this case, there are provided an upper illumination 22 and a side illumination 24 that project from the ceiling and the side), and an image processing amplifier 30 that performs image processing on the video captured by the fixed camera 20 and determines the position of the joint in the field of view. Is.

  As the upper illumination 22, white parallel illumination from the ceiling can be used as it is. Further, as the side illumination 24, white diffused illumination which is smaller than the ceiling illumination and has low illuminance can be used.

  Here, the side illumination 24 is added in addition to the upper illumination 22 because the pipe conveyor itself is black as a whole, and the upper illumination 22 alone is the contour of the lower side of the pipe conveyor (the left side in FIG. 4A). Is difficult to identify from the background, and it is difficult to accurately detect the seam 13. Therefore, by irradiating illumination from another angle, the color of the light at the seam portion is changed and emphasized so that the seam can be detected. It is.

  An example of an image of the fixed camera 20 in the present embodiment is shown in FIG. As is apparent from the figure, the portion illuminated by the upper illumination 22 of the pipe conveyor 10 is white, the portion illuminated by the side illumination 24 darker than the upper illumination is gray, and the seam 13 is captured black. Accordingly, by scanning the image in the horizontal direction from the right, for example, a density distribution as shown in FIG. 4B is obtained, so that the seam can be reliably detected.

  Therefore, the image processing amplifier 30 can calculate the position of the joint 13 as numerical data from the distance between the camera and the image and the resolution of the image.

  In the present embodiment, since the illuminance of the side illumination 24 is lower than the illuminance of the upper illumination 22, there is a difference in shading between the upper surface and the side surface of the pipe conveyor 10. It is also possible to configure the second embodiment using an illuminance equivalent to 22. An example of an image in the case of the second embodiment is shown in FIG.

  Next, a third embodiment of the present invention that avoids rolling by using the rolling measurement device according to the present invention will be described in detail.

  This embodiment is shown in FIGS. 1 and 2 as shown in FIG. 6 (front view showing the whole), FIG. 7 (plan view), and FIG. 8 (transverse sectional view taken along line IIX-IIX in FIG. 7). The pipe conveyor 10 similar to the conventional example shown includes, for example, two sets of alignment rollers 41 and 42 and a fixed camera 20 disposed on the exit side of the second alignment roller 42.

  As shown in FIG. 8, the alignment rollers 41 and 42 include a pair of left and right holding rollers 43 and a pressing roller 44 that presses the conveyor belt 12 from above, and can be rotated left and right.

  The system configuration of this embodiment is shown in FIG. In the figure, reference numeral 50 denotes the image processing amplifier 30, parameter adjustment, meandering amount display, cylinder operation amount display, touch panel 52 also serving as an operation switch, and an on-site operation panel for accommodating a safety switch 54 with a lamp, for example. A programmable controller (PLC) 46 that receives meandering data from the image processing amplifier 30 and calculates a required control amount is an automatic aligner cylinder for rotating the aligning rollers 41 and 42 left and right. .

  Hereinafter, the operation of the third embodiment will be described.

  First, the operation amount of the automatic aligner cylinder 46 is set by the touch panel 52, and a parameter for determining the set amount of the aligner is set by meandering data.

  The image processing amplifier 30 performs image processing on the signal from the fixed camera 20, calculates how many mm it deviates from the reference point, and outputs it to the PLC 60.

  The PLC 60 controls the automatic aligner cylinder 46 by the meandering amount from the touch panel 52 and the image processing amplifier 30.

  In this embodiment, the rolling generated by the front alignment roller 41 is corrected by the rear alignment roller 42 in FIG. 10, and the two alignment rollers 41 and 42 are moved in the same direction (right in the figure). FIG. 11 shows a state where the amount of rolling is increased.

  In the above embodiment, a CCD camera is used as the fixed camera 20, but the type of the fixed camera is not limited to this, and for example, a one-dimensional image sensor can be used.

  The illumination method is not limited to a combination of parallel illumination from the ceiling and diffuse illumination from the side, and both can be either parallel illumination or diffuse illumination. In addition, when the pipe conveyor is viewed from the fixed camera 20, it is only necessary to irradiate illumination from a position where the outline becomes clear, so the angle formed by the two illuminations is not limited to 90 °.

  Further, the way in which the seam 13 of the conveyor belt 12 overlaps is not limited, either of which may be on top.

Front view showing the overall configuration of an example of a pipe conveyor Cross-sectional view along line II-II in FIG. The block diagram including sectional drawing which shows the structure of 1st Embodiment of this invention. The figure which shows the (A) image of 1st Embodiment, and the figure which shows the example of the density distribution along (B) scanning line The figure which shows the (A) image of 2nd Embodiment, and the figure which shows the example of the density distribution along (B) scanning line The front view which shows the whole structure of 3rd Embodiment of this invention. Same top view Cross-sectional view along line IIX-IIX in FIG. The block diagram which shows the system configuration | structure of 3rd Embodiment. Similarly, a plan view showing a state where the rolling generated by the front alignment roller is corrected by the rear alignment roller The top view which shows a mode that the two alignment rollers are similarly rotated in the same direction.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 10 ... Pipe conveyor 12 ... Conveyor belt 13 ... Seam 20 ... Fixed camera 22 ... Upper illumination 24 ... Side illumination 30 ... Image processing amplifier 41, 42 ... Alignment roller 46 ... Automatic aligner cylinder 60 ... Programmable controller (PLC)

Claims (3)

In the pipe conveyor rolling measurement method for detecting the conveyor belt rolling,
Projecting light from two locations from the direction substantially perpendicular to the traveling direction of the pipe conveyor toward the joint of the conveyor belt,
A rolling measurement method for a pipe conveyor, characterized in that an image processed by a fixed camera in the middle of the two light projecting positions is subjected to image processing to determine a position of a joint in a visual field. In the pipe conveyor rolling measuring device for detecting the conveyor belt rolling,
A fixed camera installed at a position for photographing the joint of the conveyor belt;
A projector that projects light from two locations sandwiching the fixed camera in a field of view of the fixed camera from a direction substantially perpendicular to the traveling direction of the pipe conveyor toward a joint of the conveyor belt;
Image processing means for performing image processing on the video captured by the fixed camera, and determining a position of a seam in the field of view;
A rolling measurement device for a pipe conveyor, comprising:   A rolling avoidance method for a pipe conveyor, wherein the alignment roller is controlled so that the position of the conveyor belt joint detected by the rolling measurement method according to claim 1 is constant.

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