Investigation of Wire Mark Reading Methods to Support Automatic Quality Control

During the assembly of a control cabinet, a worker obstructs many individual configured wires. To distinguish these wires, a printer plots an identifying text on each end of the wires. However, due to the shape of the wires and the printing process, the quality of these markings is often too low, and it is hard or impossible to read the marking. Common reasons are a low contrast or a blurred text. By now, there is no quality check of the marking after a crimping machine produced the wire. This paper investigates methods for wire mark reading that is required to estimate the quality of the marking. By using optical character recognition, the likeliness that a worker can read the marking must be computed. In the final solution, the quality check of the marking will be implemented within an automated quality check that is located after the printing process. With this, the crimping machine can then discard wires of low quality and reproduce them instantly

Convolutional Bidirectional Variational Autoencoder for Image Domain Translation of Dotted Arabic Expiration

THIS paper proposes an approach of Ladder Bottom-up Convolutional Bidirectional Variational Autoencoder (LCBVAE) architecture for the encoder and decoder, which is trained on the image translation of the dotted Arabic expiration dates by reconstructing the Arabic dotted expiration dates into filled-in expiration dates. We employed a customized and adapted version of Convolutional Recurrent Neural Network CRNN model to meet our specific requirements and enhance its performance in our context, and then trained the custom CRNN model with the filled-in images from the year of 2019 to 2027 to extract the expiration dates and assess the model performance of LCBVAE on the expiration date recognition. The pipeline of (LCBVAE+CRNN) can be then integrated into an automated sorting systems for extracting the expiry dates and sorting the products accordingly during the manufacture stage. Additionally, it can overcome the manual entry of expiration dates that can be time-consuming and inefficient at the merchants. Due to the lack of the availability of the dotted Arabic expiration date images, we created an Arabic dot-matrix True Type Font (TTF) for the generation of the synthetic images. We trained the model with unrealistic synthetic dates of 59902 images and performed the testing on a realistic synthetic date of 3287 images from the year of 2019 to 2027, represented as yyyy/mm/dd. In our study, we demonstrated the significance of latent bottleneck layer with improving the generalization when the size is increased up to 1024 in downstream transfer learning tasks as for image translation. The proposed approach achieved an accuracy of 97% on the image translation with using the LCBVAE architecture that can be generalized for any downstream learning tasks as for image translation and reconstruction.Comment: 15 Pages, 10 figure

Automatic optical inspection for detecting keycaps misplacement using Tesseract optical character recognition

This research study aims to develop automatic optical inspection (AOI) for detecting keycaps misplacement on the keyboard. The AOI hardware has been designed using an industrial camera with an additional mechanical jig and lighting system. Optical character recognition (OCR) using the Tesseract OCR engine is the proposed method to detect keycaps misplacement. In addition, captured images were cropped using a predefined region of interest (ROI) during the setup. Subsequently, the cropped ROIs were processed to acquire binary images. Furthermore, Tesseract processed these binary images to recognize the text on the keycaps. Keycaps misplacement could be identified by comparing the predicted text with the actual text on the golden sample. Experiments on 25 defects and 25 non-defected samples provided a classification accuracy of 97.34%, a precision of 100%, and a recall of 90.70%. Meanwhile, the character error rate (CER) obtained from the test on a total of 57 characters provided a performance of 10.53%. This outcome has implications for developing AOI for various keyboard products. In addition, the precision level of 100% signifies that the proposed method always offers correct results in detecting product defects. Such outcomes are critical in industrial applications to prevent defective products from circulating in the market

Integrated low-cost reading device targeting the accessibility to quality education for the visually impaired.

Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu- Natal, Durban.The movement of society into the Fourth Industrial Revolution introduces a fundamental shift in how Mechatronic devices are implemented in daily life and the workplace. Terms such as ‘efficiency’ and ‘competitive advantage’ bolster the drive to develop technology that sets one company, business or manufacturer apart from the rest. However, is there a possibility that the same technology can be used to unify society by providing equal opportunity within the workplace, academia, and everyday life? This research addresses the position of the South African visually impaired community within Industry 4.0 and how Mechatronic technology can be used to improve current employment statistics and quality of life. The purpose of the research project was to assess the financial and operational viability of a portable text to braille transcription device with focus on the implementation of novel small-scale Dielectric Elastomer Actuators (DEAs). The device was required to transcribe printed characters into braille in real-time. This allowed visually impaired individuals access to books, journals and newspapers without assistance or the need to wait for the production of a braille-embossed printed copy. In addition, the research included an assessment of the current employment and educational circumstances of the blind and visually impaired community of South Africa as well as an investigation of the ideal approach to address multiple key factors using a single device. The design of the selected device was comprised of three major subsystems; the optical character recognition hardware, the software and electronics required to transcribe the characters into a series of voltage outputs and the actuation system of the tactile display. The synthesis and operating conditions of the dielectric elastomer actuators were experimentally assessed. The tactile display was required to be low cost, small-scale, portable, and robust to present a sustainable solution to the challenges presented by the lack of accessible reading material and high cost of commercially available options. Scaled models of the DEA were synthesised. The subsequent experiments included the comparison of elastomer materials, electrode materials, the effect of pre-strain on DEA performance, the effect of different application methods of carbon electrodes and the performance of inflated DEA membranes. The electronic subsystem was simulated to investigate the reaction time of the device. Design challenges included the requirement of a high voltage power supply to actuate the DEA, the insulation of the synthesised membranes, electrical protection of the micro-controller and the incorporation of optical character recognition programmes. This research aimed to assist in the development of actuators with greater portability and scope for miniaturisation than commercially available pneumatic or piezoelectric alternatives while addressing the challenges faced by the visually impaired community of South Africa

Each book its own Babel:Conceptual unity and disunity in early modern natural philosophy

Natural philosophy changed quickly during the early modern period (1600-1800). Aristotelian philosophy was combated by Cartesian mechanicism, which was soon itself ousted by the Newtonian school. The development of new ideas within a scientific discipline is partially an issue of doing empirical research, in order to exclude positions and progress the field. However, it is also an issue of developing new concepts and a fitting language, in order to be able to express all these new positions being investigated. This second development however also implies that the differences between thinkers might grow too large - the languages in which they express their philosophy can become too different for them to have a meaningful discussion. In this dissertation I investigate, using algorithms that extract the meaning of words from texts, a few hundred texts from these three different school. I do this in order to see how they differ from each other conceptually, how the meaning of words can travel through lines of influence from author to author and how guarding the boundaries of a school and guarding the language they use, relate