Video analysis quality management is a technique that is adopted by manufacturers to selectively remove defective products from their manufacturing lines. At ordinary factories, the sorting process is done by human eyes and hands where workers manually check to see if there are any defective components. Such a human-based process is slow and not perfect. Also, the manual quality management system is not ideal for products such as semiconductors which have circuits hidden inside the product body.
At AI-based automated factories, quality management systems use various optic equipment such as X-ray machines and high-performance cameras to analyze mass-produced products and quickly remove defective items off the line. Semiconductors are checked using X-ray cameras that can see through the cover and check the integrity of the circuits.
The state patent office said that a total of 202 patents for AI video analysis-based quality management were applied by South Korean companies, individuals, institutes, and organizations as of 2023, accounting for 25.4 percent of the number of patents applied globally. China had 143 patent applications (18 percent) and Japan had applied for 139 patents (17.5 percent). The United States had 135 patent applications (17 percent).
The growth rate of applications over the past five years was 63.4 percent, indicating an acceleration in patent applications in the video analysis-based quality management technology field. South Korea's patent office said that the technology trend has been accelerated since AI technologies were adopted in various fields starting in 2016.
"In the field of smart quality management technology, which is still in the growth stage, we will continue to provide relevant analysis data to enable early-stage companies to challenge core technology development," Park Hyun-soo, the head of the patent office's smart manufacturing evaluation team manager, said in a statement on November 27.
