Finished leather (in the form of leather hides) meant for premium leather products (bags, shoes, belts, jackets etc.,) is inspected for defects. Typical defects found are drawn grain, white spots, soft skin, rough grain, growth mark etc., (Some of the defects are shown in Figure 1 below).
Manual inspection of finished leather hides is time consuming & requires skilled and experienced operators and difficult because it requires careful examination. It is also strenuous as the leather needs to be checked from multiple angles to identify the defects. The manual process is not fool proof and may lead to errors of both types - false positives (defects missed out) or false negatives (non-defects identified as defects). Based on the inspection. The leather hides are classified into Grade 1,2,3,4 & 5. The quality or grade of the hide is defined as the difference between total defect area and the overall area of the hide. If 97% area of leather hide is available for cutting (free of defects) it is called Grade 1 and if 93% is available it is classified as Grade 2 and so on, according Satra standards.
It takes about 30 seconds per hide to inspect a leather hide.
This challenge seeks an automated system which will replace the manual inspection process. The Automatic inspection should match the quality definitions available internationally – Example Satra standards. Typical defects in a leather hide are shown in figure 1 below. For more defects, please refer to: https://www.leather-dictionary.com/index.php/Leather_quality.
