Inventory monitoring method and inventory monitoring device

Abstract

The present disclosure discloses an inventory monitoring method and an inventory monitoring device, the method comprising: monitoring the item upon receiving a signal indicating a change in the item; scanning the item; obtaining item information based on the scan result; and updating the information of the items in inventory based on the obtained item information; scanning the item and obtaining item information based on the scan result includes establishing point cloud information including the height of the item and establishing panoramic depth information of the item, thereby determining the item information. The present disclosure can scan the changed items in real time, enabling accurate counting of the number of flat products and high-precision estimation of the number of items in disordered stacking to achieve high-precision inventory monitoring. It can also reduce the residence time of the scanning device in the container holding the object, thereby reducing the residence time of the scanning device in harsh environments and improving the life of the scanning device.

Description

Technical Field

[0001] The present disclosure belongs to the field of inventory monitoring, and in particular relates to an inventory monitoring method and an inventory monitoring device. Background Art

[0002] Inventory monitoring is a very important aspect for industries such as manufacturing and the food industry. Effective inventory monitoring can quickly and accurately count the types, quantities, and time of items in inventory, thereby obtaining relevant information and facilitating the management of inventory items. For the food industry, especially the fast food industry, inventory monitoring of food is particularly important. For example, for food in a thermal cabinet, when the storage time of the food in the inventory exceeds a certain period, it needs to be discarded to avoid exceeding the expiration date; when a part of the food in the inventory is sold, it needs to be replenished in time to ensure the subsequent supply of food. Therefore, the food in the thermal cabinet is in a dynamic process of being sold, updated, and sold, and the quantity, location, and update time of the food in the thermal cabinet are correspondingly in a dynamic process of change.

[0003] Existing inventory monitoring methods initially relied on manual counting. However, this reliance on humans can lead to errors and is not suitable for monitoring complex, dynamically changing items. A widely adopted approach is to use RFID technology for real-time tracking. Image-based inventory counting also exists.

[0004] RFID technology is primarily suitable for tracking clothing or containers, but not for tracking individual foods. It cannot track changes in the quantity of food within a container. Current image-based inventory counts can only be used for completely flat items with well-defined individual items, and cannot handle stacked products. Furthermore, commercial cameras on the market all operate at room temperature, generally not exceeding 55 degrees Celsius, and cannot adapt to higher-temperature working environments. However, some foods need to be placed in a higher-temperature insulation cabinet, which limits the camera's operating scenarios and service life. Summary of the Invention

[0005] Based on this, it is necessary to provide an inventory monitoring method and an inventory monitoring device to solve at least one of the above problems existing in the inventory monitoring technology in the prior art.

[0006] To this end, the present disclosure proposes an inventory monitoring method for monitoring items in inventory, the method comprising:

[0007] When a signal that an item has been changed is received, the item is monitored;

[0008] Scan the item; obtain item information based on the scanning result;

[0009] updating information of items in stock based on the acquired item information;

[0010] It is characterized by:

[0011] Scanning the object and obtaining the object information based on the scanning result includes establishing point cloud information including the height of the object and establishing panoramic depth information of the object, thereby determining the object information.

[0012] According to one aspect of the present disclosure, determining the item information includes:

[0013] Calculating the volume of the object based on the panoramic depth information and the area occupied by the object;

[0014] Based on the calculated volume of the items and combined with prior information about the stacking state of the items, the number of items is calculated.

[0015] According to one aspect of the present disclosure, the scanning of the object is performed using a 3D camera, and the scanning adopts line scanning, structured light or time-of-flight method.

[0016] According to one aspect of the present disclosure, the status information includes at least one of density, arrangement rules, and stackability of the items.

[0017] According to one aspect of the present disclosure, scanning the items refers to scanning at least one of newly added items, discarded items, or retained items.

[0018] According to one aspect of the present disclosure, the signal indicating that an item has been changed refers to the container in which the item is placed being opened or closed.

[0019] According to one aspect of the present disclosure, the item information includes at least one of the item category, quantity, and update time.

[0020] According to one aspect of the present disclosure, when the inventory level is lower than a preset value, a replenishment reminder or automatic replenishment is performed.

[0021] The present disclosure further provides an inventory monitoring device suitable for executing the inventory monitoring method of the present disclosure, comprising:

[0022] Item change detection device, used to detect whether inventory items have changed;

[0023] A scanning device for scanning items in inventory and generating point cloud information including the height of the items; a visual information processing device for processing the point cloud information from the scanning device to generate panoramic depth information of the items and thereby determine item information; and

[0024] The controller controls the scanning device to scan when the item change detection device detects that the inventory item has changed, and updates the information of the inventory item according to the item information processed by the visual information processing device.

[0025] According to one aspect of the present disclosure, the scanning device is disposed on a robotic arm and enters the interior of the container containing the items only when scanning is performed.

[0026] The inventory monitoring method and inventory monitoring device proposed in this disclosure have the following advantages:

[0027] 1. In response to item changes, the changed items are scanned in real time, enabling timely scanning of items and high-precision inventory monitoring. Using 3D machine vision technology, it can not only accurately count the number of flat products, but also accurately estimate the number of items in disordered stacking situations.

[0028] 2. Reduce the residence time of the scanning device in the container containing the object, thereby reducing the residence time of the scanning device in harsh environments and increasing the life of the scanning device. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0029] Further advantages, features, and details of the present disclosure are apparent from the following description of preferred embodiments in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. The features and feature combinations mentioned above in the description and the features and feature combinations mentioned below in the description of the figures and / or shown individually in the figures may be used not only in the respectively described combination but also in other combinations or individually without departing from the scope of the present disclosure. In the drawings:

[0030] Figure 1 The flowchart for monitoring the replenishment situation in the inventory monitoring method of the present disclosure is schematically shown;

[0031] Figure 2 The flowchart of monitoring the discarding of items in the inventory monitoring method of the present disclosure is schematically shown;

[0032] Figure 3 Schematically shows a flow chart of obtaining the number of items by scanning in the inventory monitoring method disclosed herein;

[0033] Figure 4 The figure schematically shows a device structure diagram for executing the inventory monitoring method of the present disclosure.

[0034] The accompanying drawings are only schematic, and they only show those parts necessary for explaining the present disclosure, while other parts may be omitted or only briefly mentioned. That is, in addition to the steps shown in the accompanying drawings, the present disclosure may also include other steps. DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0035] While the present disclosure will be fully described with reference to the accompanying drawings that contain preferred embodiments of the present disclosure, it should be understood before this description that one of ordinary skill in the art may modify the disclosure described herein while still achieving the technical benefits of the present disclosure. Therefore, it should be understood that the description herein is intended to be a broad disclosure to one of ordinary skill in the art and is not intended to limit the exemplary embodiments described herein.

[0036] In addition, in the following detailed description, for ease of explanation, numerous specific details are set forth to provide a comprehensive understanding of the embodiments of the present disclosure. However, it is apparent that one or more embodiments can be practiced without these specific details. In other cases, well-known structures and devices are shown in diagrammatic form to simplify the accompanying drawings.

[0037] exist Figure 1-3 In the method shown, the inventory monitoring method of the present disclosure is described by taking the inventory monitoring of food in a thermal insulation cabinet as an example. A plurality of foods, such as bread, chicken wings, etc., are placed in the thermal insulation cabinet. These foods may have regular or irregular shapes, and the plurality of foods may be laid out flat or stacked together. When a customer places an order for the corresponding food, the corresponding quantity of food will be taken out manually or by automated mechanical grabbing to be supplied to the customer. In addition, when the quantity of food in the thermal insulation cabinet decreases, the quantity of food in the thermal insulation cabinet will be replenished based on actual conditions, such as the number of customers, whether it is a weekday or a holiday / weekend, and other factors. In addition to replenishing food, the food in the thermal insulation cabinet will also be discarded. This is because in order to provide customers with the best quality and taste of finished food, when a batch of food has been placed in the thermal insulation cabinet for more than a predetermined time, it will be discarded instead of being supplied to customers. To this end, it is necessary to track and monitor each batch of food in real time, and when they are stored for a certain period of time from the time of production (i.e., the "expiration date", after which the quality may deteriorate) and are not supplied to consumers for consumption, they must be specially handled, such as discarded.

[0038] See also Figure 1 , the inventory monitoring in the case of replenishment is described. When the food in the thermal insulation cabinet is less than a certain amount, the door of the thermal insulation cabinet is opened, and the staff manually adds a new batch of food to the thermal insulation cabinet. Of course, replenishment can also be done automatically, for example, by transporting a new batch of food to the thermal insulation cabinet through a conveyor belt or a robotic arm. The replenishment method is not the focus of this disclosure. This disclosure only uses replenishment as a trigger condition. This embodiment starts at step S11, that is, in response to the trigger condition, inventory monitoring begins.

[0039] Then, step S12 is entered to scan the replenishment batch. In the present disclosure, three-dimensional machine vision is used to scan the replenishment batch.

[0040] In step S13, the information obtained by scanning in step S12 is processed to obtain the category and quantity of the goods added this time. In addition, preferably, the time of adding the goods can also be recorded accordingly.

[0041] In step S14, the total batch information is updated based on the batch information acquired in step S13.

[0042] Specifically, for step S12 and step S13, Figure 3 Explain it.

[0043] Figure 3 A method for calculating the number of items using three-dimensional machine vision is shown. Figure 3 The method includes the following steps:

[0044] First, in step S31, the monitored items are scanned. Figure 1 For example, when the door of the thermal cabinet is closed, it indicates that the replenishment has been completed. At this time, the camera is activated and begins to scan the items to be monitored. This step S31 corresponds to Figure 1 Step S12 in .

[0045] The scanning device used is, for example, a 3D camera, preferably a high-precision 3D camera. The 3D camera scans and photographs the items within the thermal cabinet, creating a comprehensive point cloud of the multiple items, particularly high-precision point cloud information. This scanning, in particular, can also generate point cloud information for stacked items. Scanning can utilize various methods, including line scanning, structured light, and time-of-flight (TOF).

[0046] After scanning the objects, a point cloud representing the overall depth of the objects is created. Then, in step S32, panoramic depth information is generated. Through point cloud processing, surface depth information for the stacked objects is generated, creating a topographic map that includes the overall depth information for the objects.

[0047] In step S33, based on the topographic map created in step S32, especially the depth information therein, combined with the a priori bottom surface position or the position / area occupied by the objects, the volume of the stacked objects is calculated.

[0048] Then, in step S34, the number of products is calculated based on the calculated volume of the stacked items and combined with prior state information of the relevant product stacking conditions (such as density, arrangement rules, stackability, etc.).

[0049] Steps S32 to S34 correspond to Figure 1In step S13. Figure 3 In the example shown, in addition to calculating the number of items in the batch, the types of items can also be identified by image recognition to obtain their types.

[0050] for Figure 3 As for the method shown, the fewer the items remaining in the thermal cabinet, the more accurately the number of items calculated by the 3D camera. This can achieve accurate low inventory warning when the items are almost sold out.

[0051] As an advantageous embodiment, when the inventory level is lower than a preset value, a sound, light, or vibration may be emitted to remind the staff to restock. Alternatively, when the inventory level is lower than a preset value, automatic restocking may be used to restock the product.

[0052] Therefore, for food in a disordered stacked state, the present disclosure can estimate its quantity, and for products in a flat state, the present disclosure can accurately count them. Combined with the door opening and closing signals of the thermal cabinet, real-time scanning can be performed after the staff replenishes the goods, thereby updating the inventory information and realizing effective inventory monitoring.

[0053] The following combination Figure 2 The following describes inventory monitoring in the case of food waste. As mentioned above, in order to ensure the taste and safety of food, if the food is not sold within a certain period of time after being produced, it needs to be discarded to avoid exceeding the expiration date. Figure 2 Describes how to keep records of food left over / wasted after food is discarded.

[0054] like Figure 2 As shown, this embodiment starts at step S21, that is, in response to the trigger condition, inventory monitoring begins. The trigger condition may be that an employee discards food in a display cabinet, thereby giving a discard completion signal.

[0055] Then, step S22 is entered to scan the retained batch. Similarly, in the present disclosure, three-dimensional machine vision is used to scan the retained batch.

[0056] In step S23, the information obtained from the scan in step S22 is processed to obtain the category and quantity of the remaining food. Thus, once the category and quantity of the remaining food are obtained, they can be compared with the category and quantity of the food before it was discarded to determine the category and quantity of the discarded food. Of course, the discard information can also be recorded by staff.

[0057] In addition, in step S23, the discarded food may be directly scanned to obtain the discarded category and quantity, and record the discarding time.

[0058] In step S24, the batch information is updated. In this step, the information of the retained food can be updated, and the types of discarded food can also be updated. Thus, relevant information can be obtained in real time.

[0059] Similarly, for the scanning in step S22, the same Figure 3 The same steps as those in the method shown are not repeated here.

[0060] As an optional solution of the present disclosure, when automatic meal preparation is adopted, the category, quantity and time of the food used in the meal preparation can be automatically recorded during the meal preparation process and deducted from the corresponding batch, thereby updating the inventory batch information and corresponding quantity in real time.

[0061] Figure 4 The following schematically shows a device configuration diagram for executing the inventory monitoring method disclosed herein. Figure 4 As can be seen, the device for executing the inventory monitoring method disclosed herein includes a scanning device, an item change detection device, a controller, and a visual information processing device. The functions of each device correspond to those described above. Specifically, the scanning device can be a 3D camera for scanning item information in inventory. The item change detection device is used to detect the opening and closing of containers for holding items. For example, it can be the device for detecting the opening and closing of thermal cabinet doors described above, such as a photosensor or angle sensor. Of course, different detection devices can also be used depending on the situation. The visual information processing device is used to process information from the scanning device and obtain relevant information about the items based on this information.

[0062] When the above-mentioned device is used to perform inventory monitoring, the controller receives information from the item change detection device and, in response to the information, instructs the scanning device to scan the item. The scanning device sends the scanned information to the visual information processing device, and the visual information processing device sends the processed results to the controller, which updates the item information.

[0063] As a preferred embodiment of the present disclosure, the scanning device adopts a 3D camera. Preferably, the scanning device is arranged on a robotic arm, and only when it detects that a change has occurred in the inventory items and scanning is required, the scanning device enters the container to scan. Through this setting, the residence time of the scanning device in the container can be reduced. This setting is particularly suitable for some occasions with higher temperatures. For example, in containers containing items such as sausages and bread, or other containers that need to heat items, the temperature inside the container is often high, because the camera is not suitable for staying in such high-temperature environments for a long time. This setting of the present disclosure greatly reduces the residence time of the camera in a high-temperature environment and improves the life of the camera.

[0064] certainly, Figure 4 The configuration described is merely one possible approach and does not limit its physical structure. Those skilled in the art may employ different modules as long as they can achieve their intended functionality. For example, the controller and visual information processing device may be configured as separate physical modules, but the functions of the visual information processing device may also be implemented in the controller, or the visual information processing device may be integrated into the controller.

[0065] Although food is used as an example in the above embodiments, those skilled in the art will appreciate that the inventory monitoring method of the present disclosure can also be applied to other types of items as long as there is a need for inventory monitoring.

[0066] Those skilled in the art will appreciate that all or part of the steps in the above-described method embodiments can be implemented using hardware associated with program instructions. The aforementioned program can be stored in a computer-readable storage medium. When executed, the program performs the steps of the above-described method embodiments. The aforementioned storage medium includes various media capable of storing program code, such as ROM, RAM, magnetic disks, or optical disks.

[0067] Those skilled in the art will appreciate that the embodiments described above are exemplary and may be modified by those skilled in the art. The structures described in the various embodiments may be freely combined without causing any conflict in structure or principle.

[0068] After describing the preferred embodiments of the present disclosure in detail, those skilled in the art will clearly understand that various changes and modifications may be made without departing from the scope and spirit of the appended claims, and that the present disclosure is not limited to the exemplary embodiments described in the specification.

Claims

1. A method for monitoring inventory, for monitoring inventory items, characterized in that: The method comprises: When a signal that an item has been changed is received, the item is monitored; Scan the item; obtain item information based on the scanning result; updating information of items in stock based on the acquired item information; Scanning an object and obtaining object information based on the scanning results includes establishing point cloud information including the height of the object and establishing panoramic depth information of the object, thereby determining the object information. Determining the item information includes: Calculating the volume of the object based on the panoramic depth information and the area occupied by the object; Based on the calculated volume of the items and the prior information about the stacking state of the items, the number of items is calculated. The status information includes at least one of the density, arrangement rules, and stackability of the items.

2. The inventory monitoring method according to claim 1, characterized in that: The scanning of the object is performed using a 3D camera, and the scanning adopts line scanning, structured light or time-of-flight method.

3. The inventory monitoring method according to any one of claims 1-2, characterized in that: Scanning the items refers to scanning at least one of newly added items, discarded items, or retained items.

4. The inventory monitoring method according to any one of claims 1-2, characterized in that: The signal that the item has been changed is that the container in which the item is placed is opened or closed.

5. The inventory monitoring method according to any one of claims 1-2, characterized in that: The item information includes at least one of the item category, quantity, and update time.

6. The inventory monitoring method according to any one of claims 1-2, characterized in that: When the inventory level is lower than the preset value, a replenishment reminder or automatic replenishment will be issued.

7. An inventory monitoring device adapted to execute the inventory monitoring method according to any one of claims 1 to 6, comprising: Item change detection device, used to detect whether inventory items have changed; A scanning device for scanning items in inventory and generating point cloud information including the height of the items; a visual information processing device for processing the point cloud information from the scanning device to generate panoramic depth information of the items and thereby determine item information; as well as The controller controls the scanning device to scan when the item change detection device detects that the inventory item has changed, and updates the information of the inventory item according to the item information processed by the visual information processing device.

8. The inventory monitoring device according to claim 7, characterized in that: The scanning device is arranged on the robot arm and enters the container containing the articles only when scanning is performed.

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