JPS613032A - Floc monitor system - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To always obtain stable image information, by calculating luminous intensity on the basis of the image information of a luminous intensity measuring plate and feeding back said information to a projector controller. CONSTITUTION:A luminous intensity measuring plate 10 is arranged in a water-tight container 14 in the vicinity of an image information intake region 16 so as to enter the visual field of an industrial television camera 4. Light corresponding to the change in external light and the light projected from a projector are impinged to said plate 10. Herein, an order is sent to an image discrimination apparatus 9 from a control calculator 15 and image information is taken in the camera 4 to be transmitted to the apparatus 9 through an industrial television camera controller 5. Only the information of the plate 10 is extracted from the taken-in image information to be subjected to binarization processing and, on the operated result, luminous intensity is calculated on reference to the ''1'' (or ''0'') partial area-luminous intensity corresponding table stored in a luminous intensity characteristic storing memory 14. The calculated luminous intensity information is compared with the luminous intensity set value preliminarily stored in a luminous intensity set value memory 17 and a projector controller 8 controls the quantity of light projected from a projector 7 according to the order of the calculator 15. Therefore, stable image information is obtained always.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] [Field of Application of the Invention] The present invention relates to a floc monitoring system in a 70-thick formation pond (mixing pond) of a water purification plant, and in particular, a system for monitoring floc formation using image processing technology. Regarding the system.

[Background of the invention]

At water treatment plants, the suspended particles in the raw water are small in size, so the process is to agglomerate them into flocs, which are then allowed to settle.

For this reason, it is essential to monitor the flocs in the floc formation pond (mixing pond).

Conventionally, flocs have been visually monitored every few days by a water treatment plant maintenance manager. Because it depends on visual inspection,
The judgment criteria are subjective and qualitative, and the monitoring results have the disadvantage of being difficult to reflect in driving operations. Furthermore, since the frequency of monitoring is discontinuous, countermeasures against poor aggregation are delayed, resulting in increased trouble.

On the other hand, as shown in FIG. 8, there has recently been a method of monitoring flocs in a floc-forming pond using an industrial telephoto meter. Its operation is industrial television camera 4
is installed in a floc formation pond, and the image information inputted thereby is monitored on a monitor television 6 installed in a monitoring room or the like. However, even in this case, since the monitoring method relies on human vision, it has the same disadvantages of being subjective and discontinuous. 5 is an industrial television camera controller, 7 is a floodlight, and 8 is a floodlight controller.

Therefore, in order to improve the reliability of water quality management at water treatment plants, a 9Vi industrial television camera 4 indicated by the broken line in Fig.
This is an image recognition device that determines the state of floc formation based on the image information captured.

The operation of this floc monitoring device is based on the image information of the flocs 3 in the floc formation pond 1 captured by the industrial television camera 4, and the image recognition device rl! 9, for example, after binarization processing,
The area of the floc part is calculated, and the floc formation status is determined based on the calculation result.

In order to accurately and stably recognize an image using the image recognition device FL9, an important point is how to capture the image 11j information with an industrial television camera under constant light conditions. Specifically, the key point is whether the same amount of light is projected onto the Vi recognition object. For example, if the amount of light is small, the flocs will be perceived as small, and if the amount of light is large, the flocs will be perceived as large even if they have the same shape.

Furthermore, generally, the treatment equipment of a water purification plant is often constructed outdoors and is opened to the atmosphere for the purpose of constantly monitoring flocs. Therefore, the amount of light that enters the floc formation pond changes over time and is affected by changes in the weather, resulting in a wide range of variations.

Therefore, in the system shown in FIG. 8, it is difficult to eliminate the influence of changes in illuminance as a natural phenomenon, and some measure is required.

To deal with this, for example, industrial television camera 4
By installing an illuminance meter or the like near the outside to obtain information on the illuminance of outside light, controlling the amount of light emitted by the projector 7 based on that information, and correcting the difference between the predetermined amount of light and the amount of outside light. Creates light conditions for 100% recognition! Although highly accurate image information can be obtained, in general, incorporating these measuring devices into a flock monitoring system requires an interface device that converts the illuminance meter output into a signal that can be calculated by a computer.

Since the illumination meter is installed inside the floc formation pond, it is expensive due to the need for watertight measures, and it also leads to an increase in the number of components for the floc monitoring system, which reduces reliability.
This results in increased running costs such as maintenance.

[Purpose of the invention]

An object of the present invention is to provide a floc monitoring system for stably capturing the floc formation status as image information under known light conditions.

[Summary of the invention]

The main points of the present invention are to provide a light projecting means that can control the illuminance, and a light projecting means that can control the illuminance, in order to quantitatively grasp the state of floc formation in a floc formation pond of a water treatment plant using processing technology. In order to measure the patterns 11 to 11 in the flock image information acquisition area, the illuminance measurement board installed near this area and image information acquisition means are used to measure the image information of the illuminance measurement board 1. The illuminance is calculated based on the U'i information, and the U'i information is fed back to the floodlight controller, so it can be corrected no matter what the outside light conditions are. System configuration,
The objective is to obtain image information with high reliability and always under stable light conditions.

[Embodiments of the invention]

Hereinafter, the present invention will be described in detail based on the drawings. FIG. 1 is an embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 2 is an enlarged view of the section shown by the arrow ▪ in FIG. 1 is a flock formation pond, 2 is a paddle, 3 is a flock, 4 is an industrial television camera, 5 is a controller that controls the industrial television camera 4, 6 is a monitor television, 7 is a floodlight, 8 is a floodlight 70 that controls the amount of light emitted. 9 is an image recognition device, 10 is an illuminance measurement board, 11 is a possible floodlight controller;
12 is a watertight container, 13 is a back screen, 14 is an illuminance characteristic storage memory, 15r is a control computer that controls these devices, 16 is an image information capture area, and 17 is an illuminance setting value memory. , 18 is external light, and 19 is light projected by a projector.

The operation of the floc monitoring system will be described below.

An illuminance measuring plate 10, an example of which is shown in FIG. 2, is painted so that the brightness changes steplessly from black to white from one end to the other in the long side direction of a rectangle, as shown by the broken line. It is installed in the watertight container 12 near the image information capture area 16 so as to be within the field of view of the industrial television camera 4. The illuminance measurement function 10 is illuminated by light according to changes in external light 18 (natural phenomena, that is, light that clusters due to day/night differences and time differences) and light projected from a projector 19. Therefore, the control computer 15 issues a command to the image recognition device 9 to perform the following (
Perform operations 1) to (6).

(1) Send an image information capture command from the control computer 15 to the image recognition device 9, capture the image information with the industrial television camera 4, and send it to the image recognition device 9 via the industrial television camera controller 51. to be transmitted.

When this video information is imported, a video as shown in FIG. 3(a) is obtained. That is, out of the outside light 18 and the video information taken in by the floodlight (2) shown in FIG. 3(a), only the video information of the illuminance measurement board 10 is extracted. (bl(3) Binary processing of the video information extracted in (2) above (a video information part at a high brightness level exceeding a predetermined threshold 11 is set to "1", and a video information part at a low brightness level is set to "1") 0'').
C) (4) Calculate the area of the "1#" (or "0") portion of the binarized video information (specifically, calculate the number of pixels). (d) (5) Based on the result calculated in (4) above, 1# (or “
0'') The expanded illuminance is calculated by referring to the partial area-illuminance correspondence table. (e) In this way, the illuminance in any light condition is calculated by performing the image processing operation that the image recognition device 9 is good at. It can be easily measured without using special measuring equipment such as an illumination meter.

(6) The calculated illuminance information is transmitted to the control computer 15, and it is determined whether it matches the illuminance setting value stored in advance in the illuminance setting value memory 17. If the illuminance is insufficient, a command to increase the amount of light emitted is issued. If the illuminance is excessive, a command to reduce the amount of projected light is transmitted to the projector controller 8, respectively. The floodlight controller 8 follows the instructions from the control computer 15.
The light projector 70 controls the amount of light emitted.

In this way, by repeating the above-mentioned steps (1) to (6) in detail, when the illuminance information matches the illuminance setting value in the illuminance setting value memory 17, the control computer 15 issues a floc formation situation understanding calculation command. is sent to the image recognition device 9, and the third
Based on the image information of the portion indicated by A in Figure (a), the state of floc formation is determined (for example, after the binarization process, the area of the floc portion is calculated).

In this way, regardless of the external light conditions, illuminance information can be obtained without using special illuminance measurement means (such as an illuminance meter) and by effectively utilizing the image recognition device with an illuminance measurement function. By being able to measure accurately and reliably and controlling the amount of light emitted based on that information, constant light conditions always appear in the image information capture area 16, stable flock image information can be captured, and the image By performing random calculations on the information, such as calculating the area of the flocs after binarization processing, it is possible to quantitatively and continuously grasp the floc formation status.

Although the illuminance measurement plate 10 is rectangular in this embodiment, its shape is not particularly limited.

FIG. 4 shows another embodiment '''C.A part of the screen 13 is coated with the illuminance measurement coating described in FIG. It is colored 22.

20 is a wiper that sweeps the back screen 13 and the observation window glass 11 at the same time, and 21 is a morph that drives the Wainoku-20.

FIG. 5 shows another embodiment in which the present invention is applied to a turbidity meter.

This embodiment attempts to measure the turbidity of a subject by capturing the amount of transmitted light that changes depending on the turbidity of the subject using an illuminance measuring plate and an image recognition device.

In the figure, 23 is a conduit that guides the subject, 24A and B are transparent plates,
7 is a light projector that projects a certain amount of light; 25 is a parallel light reflecting mirror; and 26 is a pump that sends the subject to the conduit 23 at a constant flow rate. FIG. 6 is an enlarged sectional view taken in the direction of the arrow ■ in FIG. 5. FIG.

The operation of a turbidity meter using an image processing device having such characteristics will be explained.

The subject 27 is sent by the pump 26 to the tube 23 at a constant flow rate. The conduit 23 is provided with transparent plates 24A and 24B,
Light is projected by the light projector 7, reflected by the parallel ray reflecting mirror 25, and turned into parallel rays onto the transparent plate 24A. This parallel light ray 28 passes through the transparent plate 24A (jX
Although it is scattered by particles 29 in the subject flowing through the conduit 23, a portion of the light 30 that is not scattered and passes through the subject passes through the transparent plate 24B and hits the illumination measurement plate 10.

In other words, if the number of particles that cause the principal scattering in the specimen increases, the amount of scattered light will increase, and some of the parallel light rays 28 projected from the projector 7 will pass through the specimen and be used for illuminance measurement. The amount of light 30 that passes through the plate 10 decreases, and conversely, if there are fewer particles, the amount of light that is scattered will decrease.
The amount of light 30 passing through the conduit 23 and hitting the illuminance measuring plate 10 increases. In this way, light corresponding to the turbidity of the subject is projected onto the illuminance measuring plate 10. Therefore, the image information of this illuminance measurement board 10 is captured by the industrial television camera 4,
The same process as explained in FIG. Then, the turbidity of the subject is calculated by referring to the "1" (or "0#) partial area-illuminance correspondence table stored in the turbidity characteristic storage memory 31.

Furthermore, by coating the illuminance measurement plate 10 with the color explained in FIG. 3 on the light transmission screen as shown in FIG. 7, a light transmission type illuminance measurement system as shown in FIG. It is possible.

In this embodiment, an industrial television camera is used as the image information capture device, but any other device capable of capturing image information, such as a line sensor, may be used.

〔Effect of the invention〕

According to the present invention, since the illumination information is fed back to the light projection amount control, flock image information can be stably taken in from eC to '7'+', and fQ l! j
r! An I' tllll system can also be constructed.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Fig. 1 is an explanatory diagram of one embodiment of the present invention, Fig. 2 is a view in the direction of the ■ arrow in Fig. 1, Fig. 3 is an explanatory diagram of the operation of the present invention, Figs.
Figure 6 is a sectional view taken in the direction of arrow ■ of Figure 5, explanatory diagram of another embodiment of the present invention, Figure 8 The figure is a diagram VIli of a conventional example.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A device that captures the floc formation situation in a water treatment plant floc formation pond as image information, which includes a light projecting means that can control the amount of light emitted, and is installed near the area illuminated by this light projecting means, and the brightness is stepless. an illuminance measuring mechanism painted in a variable color; a means for capturing image information between the area illuminated by the light projecting means and the illuminance measuring mechanism; and an image processing means for performing various calculations on the image information. A floc monitoring system characterized by having a more structured structure.