Patent Document ID: 6163374
Application ID: 09161303
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A bending angle detection system for determining a bending angle of a workpiece by image processing, the system comprising: (a) light projector means for projecting light at a specified angle onto a surface of a workpiece to form a linear projected light image on the workpiece surface; (b) pickup means for picking up an image of the surface of the workpiece on which the linear projected light image has been formed by the light projector means; (c) representative pixel detecting means for determining a representative pixel of each scanning line on the image picked up by the pickup means from the distribution of the brightness values of pixels lying on said scanning line; (d) workpiece representative pixel extracting means for extracting representative pixels associated with the linear projected light image formed on the workpiece surface, based on the frequency distribution of the brightness values of the representative pixels determined by the representative pixel detecting means; (e) representative straight line computing means for computing a representative straight line associated with the linear projected light image formed on the workpiece surface from the plurality of representative pixels extracted by the workpiece representative pixel extracting means; and (f) bending angle computing means for computing a bending angle of the workpiece based on the representative straight line computed by the representative straight line computing means.