Regarding my progress, I looked through online libraries for OCR (Tesseract) and nutritional label reading algorithms. I looked through them for important functions and how to integrate them into our project. The githubs that I have viewed are the following: https://github.com/openfoodfacts/off-nutrition-table-extractor/blob/master/nutrition_extractor/symspell.py and https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract. The purpose of doing this is to provide myself with a better understanding of how these libraries work and areas in which I can fine-tune them for our specific project. I found that the nutrition label extractor seems to only take.png images, and I changed the code to support newer versions of numpy and Tesseract. This algorithm does not do as well as we expected, so we might need to modify the algorithm or completely scratch it out.
In addition to this, I did research online to create a purchase list. I first found a convenient scale to use. We are looking for a scale that has the ability to connect to a laptop and send weight data to the computer. I will work on this part of the project later when we receive the scale; the scale seems to work with excel sheets, so I would need to understand how to convert an excel sheet into database entries. I also looked for LED strips to illuminate the item. All of this work has been added to a parts list that is shared amongst my team.
Currently, my progress is on schedule; however, looking through the library, I expect some issues with integrating various functionalities which might exceed the estimated time. However, I plan to get a better idea next week after I do basic small tests using my macbook camera.
Overall, this week I focused primarily on presentations and organizing work for the following weeks. Next week, I hope to get physical proof that the OCR and nutritional label algorithms are working more effectively with example items and classifications displayed on a console. Next, I will look into image classification to classify fruits and vegetables. Finally, I plan to work with Surya to get access to a makerspace at TechSpark to do wood work.