Automatic steel bar counting in production line based on laser triangulation

Within the steel industry, hot rolling mill is the most important process in terms of quantity and variety of products. The intrinsic characteristics of such a harsh environment reduce the quantity of machine vision systems installed in this industry. Specifically, there is not industrial system in the world capable of counting reinforcing bars of any diameter with 100% of accuracy. This paper presents the development and implementation of a 3D vision system for counting reinforcing bars in a hot rolling mill overcoming the limitations of mechanical counting in existing hot rolling mills. Experimental results obtained in a real industrial environment are shown, proving the viability of the system. The proposed solution can be applied to count different diameter in actual manufacturing conditions with variable lighting conditions.