Digital instrumentation calibration using computer vision

Abstract

This paper describes a computer vision system designed to automatically read the displays of digital instrumentation. The system is used in calibration sessions where many measurements have to be made and where we are interested in getting the whole numerical series downloaded on a host computer. Before our system was running, a human operator had to inspect the instruments at the right times (required by the calibration procedure) and to write down all the results. Note that we are speaking of very simple and sometimes old instruments that usually do not provide a digital interface or a removable memory (and if they do, we do not have a standard interface accepted by all the manufacturers). Results show the benefits of this system, obtaining a success rate higher than 99% in display recognition