An Automatic Reading Method for Pointer Meter Based on One-Stage Detector

摘要

Nowadays pointer meters are widely used in industries. In this paper, we propose a novel automatic reading method for pointer meters. Different from previous works that adopt two-stage detectors for detection, our approach integrates two components: a one-stage detector NeighborNet (Neighbor Network) and an angle reading module. NeighborNet is a simple but effective framework that can generate keypoint detection and meter detection with higher accuracy and less inference time. Specifically, we construct a neighborhood module, which significantly improves the accuracy of keypoint detection, thereby improving the accuracy of meter readings. The prediction generated by NeighborNet are then delivered into the angle reading module to obtain the final meter reading. Experiments validate the effectiveness of our automatic reading method and also prove that our method is robust to different types of meters.