Tata Consultancy Services Limited

Bikash Santra

Shilpa Yadukumar Rao

Dipti Prasad Mukherjee

Pranoy Hari

Avishek Kumar Shaw

Rajashree Ramakrishnan

The fine-grained variations in product images are usually due to slight variations in text, size, and color of the package. Both marginal variations in image content and illumination poses an important challenge in product classification. This disclosure relates to a system and method for fine-grained classification of similar-looking products utilizing object-level and part-level information. The system simultaneously captures an object-level and part-level information of the product. The object-level classification score of the product is estimated with the trained RC-Net, a deep supervised convolutional autoencoder. For annotation-free modelling of part-level information of the product the discriminative part-proposal of the product is identified around the BRISK key points. An ordered sequence of the discriminative part-proposals and the product image, encoded using stacked convolutional LSTM network, estimates the part-level classification score. Finally, the trained RC-Net and stacked conv-LSTM network jointly classifies the product image based on the final classification score.

Fine-grained classification of retail products

This disclosure relates generally to a system and method to identify various products on a plurality of images of various shelves of a retail store to facilitate compliance with respect to planograms. Planogram is a visual plan, which designates the placement of products on shelves and merchandising display fixtures of a retail store. Planograms are used to create consistency between store locations, to provide proper shelf space allocation, to improve visual merchandising appeal, and to create product-pairing suggestions. There are a few assumptions considering one instance per product class is available beforehand and the physical dimension of each product template is available in some suitable unit of length. In case of absence of physical dimension of the products, a context information of the retail store will be used. The context information is that the products of similar shapes or classes are arranged together in the shelves for consumers' convenience.

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Kolkata, India

Bikash Santra