Pointer Meter Reading Under Noise Based on Virtual Data Generation

Using machine vision for meter reading significantly enhances the efficiency of industrial monitoring. However, meters in outdoor environment are often subject to the noise such as rain and fog, which affect the accuracy of meter readings. Additionally, the meter images and labels under noise are hard to obtain. To address these challenges, We propose a method for pointer meter reading under noise based on virtual data generation. Firstly, We utilize Unity to construct an industrial meter scene, which generates the images of meter under noise and theri labels. Secondly, we develop a U-Net network with an ASPP module, which expands the receptive field of network and enhances the ability of segmentation network to capture global semantic information under noise. Finally, the angular method is used to calculate the meter readings. Experimental results show that this method can effectively read meters under noise in outdoor environments.