Category: Jason’s Status Reports

Accomplishments This Week

This week I worked on testing and verifying our design as a whole. Our verification process will mainly focus on accuracy and latency, so that the user interaction will be seemless during the demo. I will continue to work with Yuma and Siyuan for verification over the week. I also worked on the final poster which is due in a couple days.

Project Schedule and Progress

I am on schedule, and my progress is still good.

Goals for the Next Week

Next week, I will work with my team to deliver the final poster, report and prepare the demo.

Accomplishments This Week

This week I was able to integrate the ocr and camera module together so that we can move onto the full integration and validation phase. I also worked on the final presentation.

Project Schedule and Progress
Hopefully I have erased all the roadblocks for the team with the ocr and camera integration done. I will now move onto validating our integrated modules and testing the user interface of the scanner.

Goals for the Next Week
I will now test and validate our combined scanner module physically, and help Yuma with UI development as well as debug any issues that arise during the testing phase.

As you’ve designed, implemented and debugged your project, what new tools or new knowledge did you find it necessary to learn to be able to accomplish these tasks? What learning strategies did you use to acquire this new knowledge?

New tools and knowledge that I gained through capstone was learning how to use new libraries such as Tensorflow, tesseract, opencv, and etc. I had to self learn a lot of materials and go through google to get the appropriate datasets and algorithms for OCR as well.

Accomplishments This Week

This week I started integrating the OCR model, camera function, and pipeline to the rest of the modules. This took tweaking some of the code to properly function as intended. Also, the new camera arrived with the specs that we wanted and has been tested to be better than all of our previous cameras.

Project Schedule and Progress
We will follow our revised schedule which will keep us busy for the next few weeks, but manageable at the same time. I will talk about plans about verification in the next step.

Verification

For my individual verification, I have divided into 3 parts. 1 is to verify that my pipeline is sending and receiving all of the components to the central module in a timely manner. This will be done by running test cases and timing the process on the scanner module. I have mitigated potential risks by saving the data into memory instead of disk, so that it can reduce latency. 2 is to test the image acquisition process with the barcode scanning. I need to make sure nothing hinders both processes running at the same time, and make sure the images are what we want. This will be done by hand taking photos at a real setting with real products with expiration dates, and see if barcode scanning works as well. Last would be verifying that the OCR model works as planned with the rbpi, and that the model is producing the expected results. This will also be done by testing with real inputs at a real scenario.

Goals for the Next Week
I will continue to integrate the modules together, and verify that my submodule are working with the integrated module.

Accomplishments This Week

This week I finished the camera pipeline and worked with the new expiration date database in order to achieve the 90% accuracy model. A new camera was ordered that would possibly get better results, as we figured a more close range, autofocus camera would be fit. The integration of the camera will not take any more time, as the code has already been written. Importantly, I have totally revamped the OCR model which was a lot of work but would guaranteed better results if completed.

Project Schedule and Progress
Our schedule has been revised in order to keep up with all of the updates of the project. This includes my expiration date algorithm, which took quite more time than anticipated due to the lack of available datasets in the web and infrastructure.

Goals for the Next Week
I am hoping that I will be able to train the model with the given dataset before the Interim Demo, and showcase the handmade expiration date OCR model. After that, I will move on from the model itself, and work with Yuma and Siyuan on integrating the camera module with the rest of the module.

Accomplishments This Week

This week I was able to further improve on the OCR model and was able to test it out locally on some example expiration dates. It now detects various formats of dates, with a 80%+ accuracy. I also worked with Siyuan and Yuma to get the camera take pictures and send them to the OCR engine. I will work on making the interface and flow of the OCR more smoothly.

Project Schedule and Progress
Progress is being made, and OCR has been implemented. Now we need the camera to take the photos to extract the expiration dates and save them to the database.

Goals for the Next Week
My goal is to get the pipeline working for image acquisition and processing by this week, and with the OCR giving promising results I am confident that I will achieve by the deadline.

Accomplishments This Week

This week I was able to develop a simple OCR model that takes in an image input and feeds it through preprocessing, and outputs the resulting expiration date with its confidence score. It also detects the date format if the expiration date is in MM/DD/YYYY or DD/MM/YYYY.

Project Schedule and Progress

I am on schedule, and as I have ample time next week I will dedicate more effort into refining the OCR model.

Goals for the Next Week

I will continue developing the OCR model and improve the accuracy using custom data sets.