Artificial Intelligence Driving Innovation in Textile Defect Detection

Traditionally, computer vision solutions for detecting elements of interest (e.g., defects) are based on strict context-sensitive implementations to address contained problems with a set of well-defined conditions. On the other hand, several machine learning approaches have proven their generalization capacity, not only to improve classification continuously, but also to learn from new examples, based on a fundamental aspect: the separation of data from the algorithmic setup. The findings regarding backward-propagation and the progresses built upon graphical cards technologies boost the advances in machine learning towards a subfield known as deep learning that is becoming very popular among many industrial areas, due to its even greater robustness and flexibility to map and deal knowledge that is typically handled by humans, with, also, incredible scalability proneness. Fabric defect detection is one of the manual processes that has been progressively automatized resorting to the aforementioned approaches, as it is an essential process for quality control. The goal is manifold: reduce human error, fatigue, ergonomic issues and associated costs, while simultaneously improving the expeditiousness and preciseness of the involved tasks, with a direct impact on profit. Following such research line with a specific focus in the textile industry, this work aims to constitute a brief review of both defect types and Automated Optical Inspection (AOI) mostly based on machine learning techniques, which have been proving their effectiveness in identifying anomalies within the context of textile material analysis. The inclusion of Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) based on known architectures such as AlexNet or Visual Geometry Group (VGG16) on computerized defect analysis allowed to reach accuracies over 98%. A short discussion is also provided along with an analysis of the current state characterizing this field of intervention, as well as some future challenges.

Purpose This study aims to automate the visual inspection of piling sheets in water channel construction using artificial intelligence (AI). By employing image classification and object detection techniques, the research focuses on extracting and analysing geometric features to enhance the accuracy and efficiency of the inspection process. It also addresses key challenges associated with the unique characteristics of construction materials and the limited variability of available inspection datasets. Design/methodology/approach Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) with varying complexities are employed for image classification, across four and six classes, and for object detection of piling sheets in water channel environments. A dataset provided by Witteveen + Bos is preprocessed to generate training sets, and the CNN architectures are optimized for enhanced performance. The accuracy and efficiency of the proposed models are evaluated and compared against traditional manual inspection methods. Findings The AI-driven approach significantly reduces processing time, evaluating 40,000 images in just 11.9 h, compared to approximately one month using manual assessment. The 4-class classification model achieves an accuracy of 96%, while the 6-class model attains 72%. The object detection model produces a mean average precision (mAP) of 79%. These results meet the performance standards set by the Dutch company Witteveen + Bos, which demonstrate the effectiveness of AI in automating the inspection of piling sheets. Originality/value This study introduces a novel AI-based approach for assessing piling sheets, demonstrating substantial improvements over traditional inspection methods. It introduces a systematic evaluation of various CNN architectures and hyperparameters to optimize the models specifically for piling sheet inspection rather than relying on off-the-shelf solutions. The use of CNNs for both image classification and object detection adheres to relevant Dutch engineering standards. Notably, the reduction in processing time, from one month to around 12 h, represents a major advancement in the efficiency of civil engineering inspections.

As the textile industry shifts towards smart manufacturing, the detection of fabric defects has emerged as a critical element in ensuring product quality, enhancing productivity, and reducing costs. Computer vision and machine learning techniques, particularly deep learning, have emerged as essential tools in modern textile defect detection. This article provides a review of previous research in this field, examining the technological development and future directions for fabric surface defect detection. The article begins by discussing the various stages of fabric defect detection, which are categorized into four phases: image acquisition, image preprocessing, feature extraction and selection, and classification and detection. It also explores the application of image processing technologies at each stage, offering a detailed analysis of the advantages and limitations of each method through a comprehensive comparison. In addition, this article organizes existing fabric defect datasets and discusses the importance and challenges of datasets in model training. Finally, the article discusses the key challenges in fabric defect detection and outlines potential research directions for the future. The goal of this article is to guide the textile industry in selecting and applying machine vision technology, and to support the development of intelligent fabric inspection systems.

Unsupervised fabric defects detection based on spatial domain saliency and features clustering

Automatic detection of textile defects is a crucial factor in improving textile quality. Fast and accurate detection of these defects is key to achieving automation in the textile industry. However, the detection of textile defects faces challenges such as small defect targets, low contrast between defects and the background, and significant variations in the aspect ratio of defects. To address these issues, this study proposes a new method for textile defect detection based on an improved version of You Only Look Once Version 8(YOLOv8) called DA-YOLOv8s. Deep & Cross Network(DCNv2) is introduced into the Backbone Network to replace the C2F module, enhancing the extraction of network features; an self-attention mechanism, Polarized Self-Attention(PSA), is adopted to increase feature fusion capability and reduce feature loss in both channel and spatial dimensions; finally, a Small Object Detection Head (SOHead) is added to improve the feature extraction ability for small targets. Experimental results show that the improved YOLOv8 algorithm achieves has achieved mAP@0.5 and mAP of 44.6% and 48.6% respectively, which is an improvement of 4.2% and 3.8% over the original algorithm, and also outperforms the Optimal YOLOv9s model and the latest YOLOv11s model in these two metrics. The speed of textile defect detection has reached 257.38 frames per second (FPS) and the floating-point operation speed is 36.6 GFLOPS, ensuring the accuracy and speed of textile defect detection, with practical engineering application value.

Sieve mesh defect detection is a critical yet challenging task in industrial quality control. Traditional manual inspection methods suffer from low efficiency and limited accuracy due to reliance on human vision. To overcome these limitations, this paper proposes an automated defect detection system for high-precision 325-mesh sieves based on machine vision. The system utilizes a high-resolution line-scan camera to acquire detailed images of the sieve mesh. A defect detection method based on an improved YOLOv4 architecture is then developed. Specifically, the original CSPDarknet53 backbone is replaced with an enhanced VGG-16 network to reduce computational complexity. Additionally, a multiscale spatial pyramid pooling (SPP) module is introduced to improve the detection of defects with varying sizes. The proposed method is evaluated on a self-constructed sieve defect dataset. Experimental results demonstrate that the system significantly improves both the accuracy and efficiency of defect detection, making it well-suited for practical applications in automatic sieve inspection.

Ensuring high-quality production of glass products is essential in modern manufacturing, where even minor defects such as scratches, cracks, or surface irregularities can significantly affect safety, performance, and usability. Traditional visual inspection methods are labour-intensive, time-consuming, and prone to human error, creating a strong need for automated and reliable defect detection systems. The main objective of this research is to develop an efficient Deep Learning (DL) based framework for accurate binary classification of defective and non-defective glass products while addressing limitations such as subtle defect visibility, variation in lighting conditions, and dataset imbalance. Furthermore, the study aims to evaluate model performance under different hyperparameter settings using an intelligent optimisation technique. The proposed work employs the Residual Network 50 Version 2 (ResNet50V2) Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for defect classification, supported by a comprehensive preprocessing pipeline consisting of resizing, normalisation, greyscale conversion, and data augmentation. Bayesian Optimisation (BO) is integrated to fine-tune key hyperparameters, ensuring optimal learning efficiency and improved generalisation. The framework is trained using a curated glass defect dataset and evaluated using standard performance metrics to demonstrate its robustness and suitability for real-world industrial inspection scenarios. Experimental results show that the optimised ResNet50V2-BO model achieves 98.36% accuracy, along with a precision of 98%, recall of 93%, and F1-score of 95% for the defective class. The confusion matrix and PR curves further confirm the model’s ability to reliably distinguish subtle surface defects. These findings highlight the potential of the proposed approach as a fast, reliable, and scalable solution for automated quality control in glass manufacturing industries.

Abstract: Fabric production companies place great emphasis on quality control, recognizing its crucial role in their operations. Failure to identify defects in fabrics exposes these companies to the risk of financial losses and damage to their reputation due to the sale of flawed products. Typically, traditional inspection systems exhibit an accuracy range of 60-75%. This paper proposes a solution to reduce costs by introducing a fast and automated defect detection system, complemented by human operator decision-making. The system employs a specialized Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for defect detection. The training process involved the utilization of over 50 defect types to achieve a well-generalized system. Moreover, given that undetected defects (False Negatives - FNs) are more costly to the company than erroneously classifying a non-defective fabric as defective (false positives), FN reduction methods were incorporated into the proposed system. During testing, the automatic mode of the system achieved an average accuracy of 75%.

High-tension (HT) power line insulators are critical components of electrical transmission systems, and their failure due to cracks can lead to power outages and safety hazards. Traditional inspection methods are time-consuming, costly, and pose significant risks to the workers. This paper proposes an artificial intelligence (AI) based surveillance system for detecting insulator cracks. The surveillance system uses drones to capture high-resolution images of insulators and incorporates a target detection algorithm based on YOLOv11 (You Only Look Once), which utilizes the powerful learning ability of deep convolutional neural network (CNN) to classify the insulators as defective or non-defective. This method is trained on a large dataset of annotated samples. The experimental results show that the YOLOv11-based insulator defect detection method can effectively identify defective insulators from the drone-captured aerial images. Compared with the previous insulator defect identification methods, the accuracy and detection time are significantly improved. The proposed solution offers a safer, faster, and more cost-effective alternative to manual inspections, with potential applications in large-scale power line monitoring.

Metal workpieces are an indispensable and important part of the manufacturing industry. Surface flaws not only affect the appearance, but also affect the efficiency of the workpiece and reduce the safety of the product. Therefore, the appearance of the product needs to be inspected to determine if there are surface defects, such as scratches, dirt, chipped objects, etc., after production is completed. The traditional manual comparison inspection method is not only time-consuming and labor-intensive, but human error is also unavoidable when inspecting thousands or tens of thousands of products. Therefore, Automated Optical Inspection (AOI) is often used today. The traditional AOI algorithm does not fully meet the subtle detection requirements and needs to import a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), but the common deep residual networks are too large, such as ResNet-101, ResNet-152, DarkNet-19, and DarkNet-53. Therefore, this research proposes an improved customized convolutional neural network. We used a self-built convolutional neural network model to detect the defects on the metal’s surface. Grad–CAM was used to display the result of the last layer of convolution as the basis for judging whether it was OK or NG. The self-designed CNN network architecture could be customized and adjusted without using a large network model. The customized network model designed in this study was compared with LeNet, VGG-19, ResNet-34, DarkNet-19, and DarkNet-53 after training five times each. The experimental results show that the self-built customized deep learning model avoiding the use of pooling and fully connected layers can effectively improve the recognition rate of defective samples and unqualified samples, and reduce the training cost. Our custom-designed models have great advantages over other models. The results of this paper contribute to the development of new diagnostic technologies for smart manufacturing.

Introduction: This paper presents a novel approach for classifying different types of steel rods using a combination of pre-trained convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and fuzzy logic systems. We utilize VGG16, ResNet50, and InceptionV3 models to extract features from grayscale images of steel rods, which are then classified using Support Vector Machines (SVM). Furthermore, we incorporate a fuzzy logic system to improve the final classification accuracy by combining the individual accuracies of each CNN model. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in achieving high classification accuracy compared to traditional methods. Objectives: This research presents a novel multi-model approach for steel rod classification utilizing three distinct fuzzy logic systems: Fuzzy Recurrent Neural Network (RNN), Fuzzy Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), and Fuzzy Neural Network. The proposed system addresses the critical challenge of accurate defect detection and classification in steel manufacturing processes. By combining these complementary approaches, we achieve enhanced feature extraction capabilities and improved classification accuracy. Experimental results demonstrate that our multi-model system achieves a classification accuracy of 97.8%, surpassing single-model approaches by an average of 8.2%. The system successfully identifies surface defects, structural anomalies, and dimensional variations with high precision, making it suitable for real-time industrial applications. Methods: This paper introduces a novel approach for the feature extraction and classification of steel rods by integrating multiple models and utilizing fuzzy logic systems. The methodology leverages pre-trained convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for extracting comprehensive feature representations from steel rod images. These extracted features are then combined and integrated using fuzzy logic to enhance classification accuracy and reliability. By addressing the limitations of traditional manual inspection methods and single-model approaches, this integrated multi-model system offers a robust solution for real-time industrial implementation. The proposed system aims to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of quality control processes in steel rod manufacturing, ensuring consistent and accurate classification even under varying conditions and complexities. This innovative approach paves the way for more advanced and adaptable automated inspection systems in the industry. Results: The paper aims to develop an integrated multi-model system that combines three distinct fuzzy logic approaches to enhance feature extraction capabilities through complementary methodologies. By improving the classification accuracy and reliability, the system addresses the limitations of existing methods. The goal is to create a robust and adaptable system that is suitable for real-time industrial implementation for steel rod analysis and classification. This comprehensive approach leverages the strengths of multiple models and fuzzy logic techniques, ensuring accurate and efficient classification processes, even under complex and varying conditions. The proposed multi model system is designed to meet the stringent quality control requirements of industrial applications, ultimately improving productivity and product quality through reliable automated inspection and classification for steel rod with accuracy of 97.80%, precision of 97.30% and recall 97.50%. Conclusions: This paper presents a novel approach for the classification of steel rods using a combination of pre-trained CNN models and fuzzy logic systems. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method in achieving high classification accuracy. This research demonstrates the effectiveness of a multi-model fuzzy logic approach for steel rod classification. The system achieves significant improvements over single-model approaches while maintaining real-time processing capabilities. Our approach provides a foundation for further research and development in automated industrial image classification.

This paper presents a novel approach to the fast detection and extraction of fabric defects from the images of textile fabric. Automated visual inspection systems are much needed in the textile industry, especially when the quality control of products in textile industry is a significant problem. In the manual fault detection systems with trained inspectors, very less percentage of the defects are being detected while a real time automatic system can increase this to a maximum number. Thus, automated visual inspection systems play a great role in assessing the quality of textile fabrics. For the detection of fabric defects, we first decompose the image into its bit planes. The lower order bit planes are found to carry important information of the location and shape of defects. Then we find the exact location by means of mathematical morphology. The algorithm has been tested on a subset of TILDA1 image database with various visual qualities. Robustness with respect to the changes of the parameters of the algorithm has been evaluated.

Detection of fabric defects with intertwined frame vector feature extraction

Fabric defect detection is a challenging task in the fabric industry because of the complex shapes and large variety of fabric defects. Many methods have been proposed to solve this problem, but their detection speed and accuracy were very low. As a classic deep learning method and end-to-end target detection algorithm, YOLOv4 has evolved rapidly and has been applied in many industries, showing good performance. This paper proposes an improved YOLOv4 algorithm with higher accuracy for fabric defect detection, in which a new SPP structure that uses SoftPool instead of MaxPool is adopted. The improved YOLOv4 algorithm with three SoftPools can process the feature map effectively, which has a significant advantage in reducing the negative side effects of the SPP structure and improving the detection accuracy. The improved SPP structure is used by the three outputs of Backbone, and in order to ensure that the output can be inputted into the subsequent PANet successfully, the network structure is improved that a series of convolution layers after the SPP structure is added for reducing the channel numbers of feature map to an appropriate value. In addition, contrast-limited adaptive histogram equalization is adopted in advance to improve the image quality, which results in strong anti-interference abilities and can slightly increase the mAP. Experimental results show that, compared with the original YOLOV4, the improved YOLOv4 increases the mAP effectively by 6%, while the FPS only decreases by 2. The improved YOLOv4 can identify the location of defects accurately and quickly, and can also be applied in other defect detection industries.

The geometric dimensional accuracy of large-scale prefabricated components is critical for the successful implementation of prefabricated construction. However, traditional manual contact-based inspection methods are inefficient and are often simplified or even neglected in practice due to operational difficulties. To address this challenge, this study proposes an automated non-contact dimensional inspection system based on UAV photogrammetry. The system consists of three core modules: First, the 3D Model Generation Module utilizes UAV-captured multi-view imagery to rapidly reconstruct high-fidelity 3D models of construction sites using improved 3D Gaussian Splatting technology, while recovering true physical scales by integrating GPS metadata. Second, the Segmentation Module extracts target components from complex backgrounds through flexible target selection and achieves automated planar segmentation using the Region Growing algorithm. Finally, the Dimensional Inspection Module accurately calculates geometric dimensions using a self-developed “Measurement Tree” algorithm. Engineering validation demonstrates that the system achieves an average relative error of only 0.35% in the inspection of prefabricated bent caps, exhibiting excellent measurement accuracy and robustness. This study provides an efficient, precise, and intelligent solution for the quality control of prefabricated components, effectively bridging the gaps inherent in traditional inspection methods.