Portable system for box volume measurement based on line-structured light vision and deep learning

Abstract

Portable box volume measurement has always been a popular issue in the intelligent logistic industry. This work presents a portable system for box volume measurement that is based on line-structured light vision and deep learning. This system consists of a novel 2 × 2 laser line grid projector, a sensor, and software modules, with which only two laser-modulated images of boxes are required for volume measurement. For laser-modulated images, a novel end-to-end deep learning model is proposed by using an improved holistically nested edge detection network to extract edges. Furthermore, an automatic one-step calibration method for the line-structured light projector is designed for fast calibration. The experimental results show that the measuring range of our proposed system is 100–1800 mm, with errors less than ±5.0 mm. Theoretical analysis indicates that within the measuring range of the system, the measurement uncertainty of the measuring device is ±0.52 mm to ±4.0 mm, which is consistent with the experimental results. The device size is 140 mm × 35 mm × 35 mm and the weight is 110 g, thus the system is suitable for portable automatic box volume measurement.