A hardware implementation of hierarchical neural networks for real-time quality control systems in industrial applications

In this paper a real-time quality control system for steel industry is presented. The system implements the surface defect classification of steel strips in flat rolled mills in real-time. To achieve reliable classification accuracy the system implements a MLP based hierarchical neural network. A dedicated hardware implementation has been designed and manufactured to meet the realtime constraints of the application. An ASIC neural chip directly implements the neural network and it is integrated on a custom high speed co-processor board, compatible with many commercial carrier board. The entire system has been tested with data coming from the plant.