VISION ASSISTED POST LETTER SORTING SYSTEM

A PROJECT REPORT Submitted by

K KEERTHIKA J PRIYA P SHARMILA

40609105016 40609105033 40609105044

in partial fulfilment for the award of the degree Of

BACHELOR OF ENGINEERING
In

ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONICS ENGINEERING

DR PAULS ENGINEERING COLLEGE ,VILLUPURAM

ANNA UNIVERSITY:CHENNAI 600 025 APRIL 2013

BONAFIDE CERTIFICATE
Certified that this project report titled VISION ASSISTED POST LETTER SORTING SYSTEM is the bonafide work of P

SHARMILA, K KIRTHIKA and J PIRIYA , who carried out the project work under my supervision. Certified further, that to the best of my knowledge the work reported herein does not form any other project report or dissertation on the basis of which a degree or award was conferred on an earlier occasion on this or any other candidate.

SIGNATURE

SIGNATURE

Dr.E.MARIYAPPANE M.E,PhD Head of the Department Dept of EEE

Dr.pauls engineering college

Mrs . D.JAYANTHI M.E supervisor Dept of EEE

Dr.pauls engineering college

Villupuram-605 109

Villupuram-605 109

Submitted for work and viva voice held on...........................

Internal examiner

External examiner
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Before we get into things ,We would like to add a few heartfelt words for the several prominent, who were part of this project in numerous ways, people who gave unending support for the valuable assistance right from the project idea was conceived

First and for most we would like to express our thanks to our chairman DR.S.R.S.PAUL, M.E.,PhD., for his cooperation in providing the required facilities and support to complete our project We express our gratitude to our principal Dr. Y.R.M. RAO, M.E.,PhD., for his cooperation in providing the required facilities and support to complete our project

We would also like to render our profound thanks to our dean of academics, prof. N.CHANRASEKARAN, B.E.,M.SC(Engg) who has been so helpful in completing the project

We

express

our

heartfelt HOD

thanks ,department

to of

Prof.E.MARIYAPPANE,M.E.,MBA.,PhD

Electrical and electronics engineering for his generous support, who has been consistently encouraging us with his valuable suggestions and providing us the facilities to complete our project at the stipulated time We convey our gratitude to our project coordinator asst Prof Mrs.D.JAYANTHI.,M.E., For her excellent guidance and for her

prudential, suggestive and eminent help. We convey our hearty thanks to our teaching, non teaching staff, parents, family members, friends and well-wisher for their valuable suggestion and cooperation for the successful completion of our project
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ABSTRACT
The objective of the project is to segregate postal letters according to the regions (i.e. North, East, West or South) to which they are addressed, by reading the pin codes. This is achieved through OCR (Optical Character Recognition) algorithm and vision utilities available in NI Embedded Vision System.The hardware setup consists of a Basler Scout monochrome camera which acquires the image of the post letter, a conveyor that carries the letter through the system and an end sorter with four bins each corresponding to a particular region. The letter is detected by an IR sensor and an image of the postal letter is

automatically captured by the camera, these two events happen in synchronization. The rectangular box containing the PIN code is searched using pattern matching algorithm, and upon successful detection the box is assigned as Region of Interest (ROI). The first numeric of the PIN code corresponding to the region is then read from the ROI and the best possible match is taken from the file containing the trained OCR character set. The DAQ card is configured to read the matched numeric output of the OCR session which corresponds to a particular destination of the letter (i.e. North, East, West or South) and produces a subsequent control signal for the controller. The controller is programmed to align the appropriate bin in the line of the conveyor so that the letter finally drops into the bin.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER NO. TITLE PAGE NO. iii s iv vii vii x 1 1 2 3 4 5 5 5 5 5 6 6 6 6 6 7 7 7 7 7 8 9 9 9 vii

ACKNOWLEGMENT ABSTRACT LIST OF TABLE LIST OF FIGURES LIST OF ABBREVIATION 1. Introduction 1.1 Overview: The Postal Index System 1.2 Elements of VAPLSS 1.3 Working of VAPLSS 1.4 Structure of VAPLSS 1.4.1 Letter Feed 1.4.2 Image Acquisition 1.4.3 Image Processing 1.4.4 Transport Mechanism 1.4.5 End Sorter 2 System Analysis 2.1 Subject of Analysis 2.2 Software Environment 2.3 Hardware 2.3.1 Processor 2.3.2 Camera 2.4 Mechanical System 2.5 Sensors and Drives 2.5.1 Sensors 2.5.2 Drives 2.6 Controller 3 System Design 3.1 Software Development 3.1.1 Lab VIEW: An Overview

3.1.1.1 Front Panel 3.1.1.2 Block Diagram 3.1.1.3 Tools Palettes 3.1.1.4 Control Palettes 3.1.1.5 Functions Palette 3.1.2 Working with NI IMAQdx Palette in LabVIEW 3.1.3 Basic Vision Tool in LabVIEW 3.1.4 Introduction to NI-Vision Assistant 3.1.5 Image Processing Functions 3.1.6 Image Masking 3.1.7 Optical Character Recognition (OCR) 3.1.8 OCR Training 3.1.9 Reading Characters 3.1.10 Character Segmentation 3.1.11 Region of Interest (ROI) 3.1.12 Thresholding 3.1.13 Read Strategy 3.1.14 Acceptance Level 3.2 System Hardware 3.2.1 NI Embedded Vision System (NI EVS 1464 RT) 3.2.2 Basler Scout Camera 3.2.3 DAQ Card NI USB-6009 3.3 Mechanical Structure 3.3.1 Conveyor 3.3.2 Camera Mount 3.3.3 End Sorter 3.4 Electrical Components 3.4.1 Power Circuit Board 3.5 Electronic Components 3.5.1 Controller 3.5.2 High Torque Motor Driver 4 Coding

10 11 12 13 11 12

13 16 17 19 20 21 22 23 24 24 25 25 26 26

27 29 29 30 31 33 34 34 35 35 37 38 vii

4.1 Lab VIEW Code Development 4.1.1 Image Acquisition Session 4.1.2 Pattern Matching Session 4.1.3 OCR and Output Session 4.2 Arduino Uno Controller Programming 4.2.1 Objectives 4.2.2 Sequence of Action 4.2.3 Program 4.2.4 Explanation 4 Testing 5.1 Software Simulation and Testing 5.2 Software Testing Results 5.3 Problems Encountered and their Solutions 5.3.1 Problem faced in Software 5.3.2 Problem faced in Hardware 6 7 Conclusions Future Enhancements Appendices I Appendices II Appendices III References 38 40 46 49 50 50 51 52 53 53 53 56 56 57 58 59 60 63 82 84

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List of Tables
Table 6.1 Result of 50 samples for Software Testing Table 6.2 Result statistics of Testing 70 52

List of Figures
Figure 1.1 Block Diagram of the System Figure 1.2 Flow Diagram of VAPLSS Figure 3.1 Front panel Figure 3.2 Block Diagram Figure 3.3 Tool Palette Figure 3.4 Control Palette Figure 3.5 Function Palette Figure 3.6 NI Measurement and Automation Explorer Figure 3.7 NI-MAX Window for Camera Configuration Figure 3.8 Basic LabVIEW Figure 3.9 Vision and Motion Palette Figure 3.10 Vision Utilities Figure 3.11 Vision Assistant Figure 3.12 Vision Assistant Image Acquire Figure 3.13 Image Masking Figure 3.14 Block Diagram of OCR Training Figure 3.15 Reading Characters Figure 3.16 OCR Training Window\ Figure 3.17 Steps of OCR Reading Procedure Figure 3.18 Concept of Segmentation Figure 3.19 NI EVS-1464 RT Figure 3.20 NI EVS Connectivity Figure 3.21 Basler Scout Camera Figure 3.22 Camera Connector Figure 3.23 DAQ Card NI USB-6009 2 4 10 10 11 11 12 13 13 14 15 15 17 17 20 21 22 23 23 24 26 27 28 29 30

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Figure3.24 Rough View of Mechanical Structure Figure 3.25 Conveyor fitted with guide bits Figure 3.26 Photo of Camera Mount Figure 3.27 Camera mount AutoCAD drawing Figure 3.28 End Sorter Solid Works 3D Diagram Figure 3.29 Photo of the End Sorter during operation Figure 3.30 Power Circuit Board Diagram Figure 3.31 Power Circuit Used in Setup Figure 3.32 Arduino Uno: Front View / Back View Figure 3.33 Motor Driver Figure 4.1 NI DAQ Configuration Window Figure 4.2 Image Acquisition Session Figure 4.3 Vision Assistant Figure 4.4 Image Capture Figure 4.5 Machine Vision Pattern Matching Figure 4.6 Making a New Template Figure 4.7 Modifying the Template Figure 4.8 template Matching Block Figure 4.9 pattern Matching Session Figure 4.10 OCR Read Character Set Figure 4.11 OCR Read Text Figure 4.12 OCR Session Block Diagram Figure 4.13 Front Panel of the LabVIEW VI for Post Letter Sorting Figure 4.14 Arduino Programming Environment and Compiler Figure 4.15 Program: Flow Chart representation Figure 5.1 Front View of Test VI Figure 5.2 Pie Chart representation of the result Figure AII.1 Front View of Test VI Figure AII.2 Pie Chart representation of the result 30 31 31 33 33 34 34 35 37 40 40 41 42 42 43 43 45 46 47 48 49 49 50 51 53 56 63 64s

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List of Abbreviation
VAPLSS Vision Assisted Post Letter Sorting System NI National Instruments EVS Embedded Vision System DAQ Data Acquisition OCR Optical Character Recognition ROI Region Of Interest LabVIEW Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Engineering Workbench IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers PWM Pulse Width Modulation IR Infra Red PIN Postal Index Number MAX Measurements and Automation Explorer LED Light Emitting Diode DVI Digital Video Input CCD Charged Couple Device CMOS Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor