Dropper Flow Measurement by Vision

摘要

This paper deals with the accurate measurement of a liquid flow for a medical dropper. At the moment, droppers either rely on drop counting for measuring the liquid flow and they are inaccurate or they use precise peristaltic pumps and they are expensive. Because the drops falling from a pipe are subject to volume variations, some form of drop volume measurement is required. To perform this task, a vision system is well suited as it satisfies the requirement of a non-invasive measurement. The paper, thus, analyses main aspects of a vision unit that performs this task and it also presents the developed prototype dropper.