Packaging Design for Product Recognition Using Deep Learning

The convenience store industry is experiencing a growing labor shortage, and the need to automate tasks is increasing. Product display is a labor-intensive task, and product recognition is an important issue. Existing recognition methods using deep learning require relearning every time a new product is introduced, which is time-consuming. In this study, a packaging design was developed that streamlines the learning process by embedding prelearned patterns and markers into the product packaging. The proposed design consists of patterns for product identification and markers for estimating product position and orientation. These are “typographic patterns” that change the characters and their minimum unit composition, as well as the manner in which the minimum units are arranged among themselves, and can create more than 400,000 different types of any products. This paper describes the creation of the proposed patterns and marks. The proposed design was then applied to a sandwich package, and identification experiments were conducted for 23 basic placement patterns. The identification rate was over 97%.