STORE SHELF IMAGING SYSTEM

• US 20150363758A1
• Filed: 06/13/2014
• Published: 12/17/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 06/13/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Conduent Business Services, LLC (Conduent, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Xerox Corporation (Xerox Holdings Corp.)
• Inventors: Wu, Wencheng, Moore, Steven R., Wade, Thomas F., Venable, Dennis L., Ct, Adrien P., Paul, Peter
• Granted Patent: US 10,453,046 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G05D 1/0094 involving pointing a payload, e.g. camera, weapon, sensor, towards a fixed or moving target
• CPC Class Codes: G05D 2201/0207 Unmanned vehicle for inspecting or visiting an area
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/087 Inventory or stock management, e.g. order filling, procurement or balancing against orders
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/201 Price look-up processing, e.g. updating
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/20016 Hierarchical, coarse-to-fine, multiscale or multiresolution image processing; Pyramid transform
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/30252 Vehicle exterior; Vicinity of vehicle
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/74 involving reference images or patches
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/22 by selection of a specific region containing or referencing a pattern; Locating or processing of specific regions to guide the detection or recognition
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 20/10 Terrestrial scenes scenes under surveillance with static cameras G06V20/52; scenes perceived from the exterior of a vehicle G06V20/56; scenes perceived from the interior of a vehicle G06V20/59
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 30/2247 Characters composed of bars, e.g. CMC-7
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 30/414 Extracting the geometrical structure, e.g. layout tree; Block segmentation, e.g. bounding boxes for graphics or text

Abstract

A store profile generation system includes a mobile base and an image capture assembly mounted on the base. The assembly includes at least one image capture device for acquiring images of product display units in a product facility, product labels being associated with the product display units which include product-related data. A control unit acquires the images captured by the at least one image capture device at a sequence of locations of the mobile base in the product facility. The control unit extracts the product-related data from the acquired images and constructs a store profile indicating locations of the product labels throughout the product facility, based on the extracted product-related data. The store profile can be used for generating new product labels for a sale in an appropriate order for a person to match to the appropriate locations in a single pass through the store.

Claims

1. A store profile generation system comprising:

a mobile base;

an image capture assembly mounted on the mobile base, the assembly comprising image capture devices for acquiring images of product display units in a product facility, product labels being associated with the product display units which include product-related data, a first of the image capture devices capturing low resolution photographic images of the product display units and a second of the image capture devices capturing high resolution photographic images of the product display units; and

a control unit which processes the images captured by the image capture devices at a sequence of locations of the mobile base in the product facility, the control unit using the low resolution photographic images acquired from the first image capture device to identify candidate locations of the product labels, the control unit thereafter extracting the product-related data from the acquired high resolution photographic images of the candidate locations captured by the second image capture device and constructing a store profile indicating locations of the product labels throughout the product facility based on the extracted product-related data, a spatial characterization of the image capture assembly, and information on locations of the mobile base in the sequence of locations when the images were acquired.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the product-related data comprises at least one of printed barcodes and text.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein at least one of the image capture devices has a first position and a second position, vertically-spaced from the first position, for acquiring images of the product display units in the first and second positions.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the at least one image capture device includes a plurality of image capture devices, each having a first position and a second position, vertically-spaced from the first position, for acquiring images of the product display units in the first and second positions of each of the image capture devices.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the control unit translates at least one of at least two vertically-spaced acquired images based on a computed spatial profile of each of the image capture devices.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the control unit generates a composite image of one of the product display units from the least two vertically-spaced translated images.

9. The system of claim 7, wherein the computed spatial profile of the at least one image capture device includes a mapping between locations for pixels of an acquired image and locations in a real space.

10. The system of claim 1 wherein the control unit generates a packaging order or printing order for a set of replacement product labels based on the constructed store profile.

11. A store profile generation method performed with the store profile generation system of claim 1, comprising:

moving the mobile base around a product facility which includes an arrangement of product display units for displaying products, product labels being associated with the display units, the product labels displaying product-related data for the displayed products;

with the image capture assembly mounted on the mobile base, acquiring images of the product display units at a sequence of locations of the mobile base; and

with the control unit, extracting the product-related data from the acquired images and constructing a store profile indicating locations of the product labels throughout the product facility, based on the extracted product-related data, a spatial characterization of the image capture assembly, and information on the locations of the mobile base.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the product-related data comprises at least one of printed barcodes and text.

13. The method of claim 11, wherein the acquiring images of the product display units comprises acquiring images at each of a plurality of vertically-spaced positions for each of a sequence of locations of the mobile base.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the acquiring images at each of the plurality of vertically-spaced positions comprises translating an image capture device from the first position to the second position.

15. The method of claim 13, wherein the acquiring images at each of the plurality of vertically-spaced positions comprises translating a plurality of image capture device from a respective first position to a respective second position.

16. The method of claim 13, wherein the acquiring images at each of the plurality of vertically-spaced positions comprises acquiring a first image at a first of the plurality of vertically-spaced positions with a first image capture device and acquiring a second image at a second of the plurality of vertically-spaced positions with a second image capture device.

17. The method of claim 11, wherein the acquiring images of the product display units comprises:

capturing low resolution images of the product display units;

identifying candidate locations of the product labels based on the captured low resolution images;

capturing higher resolution images of the product display units in the candidate locations; and

extracting the product-related data from the higher resolution images of the candidate locations.

18. The method of claim 11, further comprising translating at least two vertically-spaced of the acquired images based on a respective computed spatial profile of an image capture device for positions of each of the at least two vertically-spaced acquired images.

19. The method of claim 18, further comprising generating a composite image of one of the product display units from the least two vertically-spaced translated images.

20. The method of claim 18, wherein the computed spatial profile of the at least one image capture device includes a mapping between locations for pixels of an acquired image and locations in a real space.

21. The method of claim 11, further comprising generating a packaging order or printing order for a set of replacement product labels based on the constructed a store profile.

22. A store profile generation method performed with the store profile generation system of claim 1, comprising:

computing a spatial profile for each of a plurality of vertically-spaced image capture device positions;

moving the mobile base around a product facility which includes an arrangement of product display units for displaying products, product labels being associated with the display units, the product labels displaying product-related data for the displayed products;

with the image capture assembly mounted on the mobile base, acquiring images of the product display units at each of the plurality of vertically-spaced image capture device positions for a sequence of locations of the mobile base; and

with the control unit, extracting the product-related data from the acquired images and constructing a store profile indicating locations of the product labels throughout the product facility based on the extracted product-related data, information on the locations of the mobile base, and computed spatial profiles.

23. The system of claim 1, wherein the second of the image capture devices captures a high resolution photographic image of one of the product display units in a respective one of the candidate locations after the control unit has identified the candidate location.

3. (canceled)

4. (canceled)

24. A store profile generation system comprising:

a mobile base which is moveable around a product facility which includes an arrangement of product display units for displaying products, product labels being associated with the display units, the product labels displaying product-related data for the displayed products;

an image capture assembly mounted on the mobile base, the assembly comprising at least one image capture device for acquiring images of product display units in a product facility, product labels being associated with the product display units which include product-related data;

a configuration component which spatially characterizes the image capture assembly by computing a spatial profile for each of a plurality of vertically-spaced image capture device positions from captured images of a printed calibration target that includes identifiable landmarks;

a control unit which processes images captured by the at least one image capture device at a sequence of locations of the mobile base in the product facility, the control unit extracting the product-related data from the acquired images and constructing a store profile indicating locations of the product labels throughout the product facility based on the extracted product-related data, the spatial characterization, and information on the locations of the mobile base when the images were acquired.