Supervised Anomaly Detection for Production Line Images using Data Augmentation and Convolutional Neural Network

Saara Asif, Muhammad Uzair Akmal, Leonid Koval, Simon Knollmeyer, Selvine G. Mathias, Daniel Grossmann

Abstract: In the manufacturing industry, automated optical inspection aims to improve the detection and classification of anomalies by utilizing artificial intelligence and computer vision techniques to enhance quality control processes and minimize production defects. However, this automated system faces significant challenges, particularly regarding the detection of anomalies due to predominance of normal instances over defected ones. Addressing this imbalance is crucial for effective real-time anomaly detection particularly in images captured by Airbag Sensors among other automotive parts. Earlier contributions in domain-specific fields commonly relied on traditional computer vision methods, while recent systems are increasingly using deep learning techniques. Utilizing various data augmentation techniques ensures a more balanced representation of anomalies in the dataset, thereby enhancing the accuracy of the detection process. Moreover, it also enhances the robustness and generalization of the anomaly detection model by exposing it to a more diverse range of instances during training. Such work has not been carried out to augment Airbag Sensor images for analysis through a deep learner. Accordingly, this paper introduces a framework that employs data augmentation techniques for Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). The proposed system, based on data augmentation and CNN, significantly improves the performance for anomaly detection in Airbag Sensor images with a classification accuracy on the unaugmented dataset being 53 % which improves to 90% with augmentation.