In order to meet the current expanding market demand for knitwear, high-speed automatic knitting machines with “one-line knit to shape” capability are widely used. However, the frequent emergence of floating-yarn stacking anomalies during the high-speed knitting process will seriously hinder the normal reciprocating motion of the needles and cause a catastrophic fracture of the whole machine needle plate, greatly affecting the efficiency of the knitting machines. To overcome the limitations of the existing physical-probe detection method, in this work, we propose a visual floating-yarn anomaly recognition framework based on a CNN-BiLSTM network with the knit feature sequence (CNN-BiLSTM-KFS), which is a unique sequence of knitting yarn positions depending on the knitting status. The sequence of knitting characteristics contains the head speed, the number of rows, and the head movements of the automatic knitting machine, enabling the model to achieve more accurate and efficient floating-yarn identification in complex knitting structures by utilizing contextual information from knitting programs. Compared to the traditional probe inspection method, the framework is highly versatile as it does not need to be adjusted to the specifics of the automatic knitting machine during the production process. The recognition model is trained at the design and sampling stages, and the resulting model can be applied to different automatic knitting machines to recognize floating yarns occurring in various knitting structures. The experimental results show that the improved network spends 75% less time than the probe-based detection, has a higher overall average detection accuracy of 93% compared to the original network, and responds faster to floating yarn anomalies. The as-proposed CNN-BiLSTM-KFS floating-yarn visual detection method not only enhances the reliability of floating-yarn anomaly detection, but also reduces the time and cost required for production adjustments. The results of this study will bring significant improvements in the field of automatic floating-yarn detection and have the potential to promote the application of smart technologies in the knitting industry.
