A mechine vision system for inspecting either "in-process" or completed (fully patterned) integrated circuit (IC) chips has been demonstrated. Applied to the inspection of a Darlington IC, the EYESEE system was shown to effectively replace a human operator in performing a final inspection task. EYESEE has been extended to inspection of certain Large Scale Integration (LSI) and Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) devices for characterization measurement of line widths and critical dimensions, for measurement of mask and reticle overlay registration accuracy, and for detection and identification of macro end micro defects. Technical feasibility has been established for automating many semiconductor inspection tasks. A comprehensive review of other relevant machine vision techniques used within the semiconductor manufacturing industry is presented.

GAGESIGHT is a computer vision system recently integrated into production which demonstrates new flexibility in production automation technology. The vision algorithm accommodates significant misregistration in the position and orientation of objects, and adjusts process control parameters accordingly. The GAGESIGHT system is easily reconfigured for inspecting new types of objects by executing a teach program, and responding to a few instructions at an interactive display console. GAGESIGHT, intially intended for the automatic inspection and assembly of pointers and other components to instrument gauges, is finding new applications as well since the approach employed makes few assumptions regarding the objects being viewed.