Abstract
In general, manual methods are often used to inspect defects in the production of metal screws. As deep learning shines in the field of visual detection, this study employs the You Only Look At CoefficienTs (YOLACT) algorithm to detect the surface defects of the metal screw heads. The raw images with different defects are collected by an automated microscopic camera scanning system to build the training and validation datasets. The experimental results demonstrate that the trained YOLACT is sufficient to achieve a mean average accuracy of 92.8 % with low missing and false rates. The processing speed of the trained YOLACT reaches 30 frames per second. Compared with other segmentation methods, the proposed model provides excellent performance in both segmentation and detection accuracy. Our efficient deep learning-based system may support the advancement of non-contact defect assessment methods for quality control of the screw manufacture.