The essence and applications of machine vision inspection for textile industry: a review

The machine vision inspection plays a vital role in the digital transformation and intelligent upgrading of the textile industry. Driven by big data and artificial intelligence model, the machine vision inspection is widely<middle dot>used in the textile industry for quality control, process monitoring, consumer personalized fitting and so on. In order to provide a comprehensive and insightful analysis of recent advances on the machine vision inspection technology in the textile industry to promote the development and bring some insights in this area, this paper presents a systematical review from the essence and applications perspective. Firstly, a technology system of machine vision-based textile inspection is proposed. Then, key technologies of image acquisition, image preprocessing, feature extraction, object detection, and result visualization are discussed. Next, applications of machine vision in the whole textile industry chain including fiber preparation, spinning, weaving, printing and dyeing, and clothing manufacturing are analyzed. Finally, the future challenges and opportunities are highlighted. Through this work, it is hoped to provide a reference for how to choose and apply machine vision technologies in the textile industry, and spark new ideas in the effort to realize intelligent textile inspection.