[jcr]

There are metric-truck-loads of existing research on behavior changes due to known surveillance. Though they might be pre-testing units off-camera for the sake of giving a good "demonstrating quality" stage show while being recorded by your system, there's also the effect of better behavior when knowingly being monitored. Either way, you win. ;)

The problem with pre-test is it can both decrease defect rate _and_ decrease throughput rate. Depending on how much each decrease is, you can actually decrease yield/time rather than increase it. This exact problem exists on PCB manufacturing. It's certainly possible to pre-test every component as it comes off the reel and before it's used on the PCB. The component pre-test does decrease defect rates of the finished boards, but it also decreases throughput rate, so it can negatively impact yield/time. The decision then becomes an investment/accounting problem. Often, post-mfg circuit/component test automation and reworking failed boards makes more sense financially.

As far as I know, no one does hard or soft real-time verification of the human side of manufacturing and lab experimentation, but _my_ knowledge of the current state of the art is admittedly outdated. Using CV and ML to spot human manufacturing errors (or inefficiencies) seems feasible if you throw enough compute power at it, but whether or not it's practical and financially viable is another (more important) question altogether.

Though CV+ML may not be reasonable in the real world, I agree with you; it sure does sound like fun to try.