Automatic reading of digital instrumentation

Abstract

This communication 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 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 protocol and 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.