Reading recognition of pointer meters based on an improved UNet++ network

Abstract Pointer meters are widely used in modern industries, such as petrochemical applications, substations, and nuclear power plants. To overcome the reading errors and inaccurate measurements due to uneven or fluctuating illumination in practical applications, this paper proposes an improved UNet++ network for recognizing pointer meter readings. First, the scale invariant feature transform feature-matching algorithm is used to adjust the captured tilted meter images to a symmetrical and upright shape. Then, the UNet++ network is used to segment the scale and pointer regions in the dashboard to eliminate background interference. Furthermore, part of the convolution in the UNet++ network is replaced with dilated convolution with different expansion rates to expand the perceptual field during network training. In the UNet++ network jump connection, the attention mechanism module is also introduced in the path to enhance the region’s features to be segmented and suppress the parts of the non-segmented area. A hybrid loss function is used for the network model training to prevent the imbalance of the segmented region share. Finally, the distance method is used to read the gauge representation. Experiments were conducted to compare the performance of the proposed method with that of the original UNet++ network in terms of feasibility and precision. The experimental results showed that the recognition reading accuracy was significantly improved by the enhanced network, with the accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity reaching 98.65%, 84.33%, and 99.38%, respectively. Furthermore, when using the improved UNet++ network for numerical reading, the average relative error was only 0.122%, indicating its robustness in a natural environment.