ESDC
Award
Awarded the National Third Prize.
You can also visit the official website to view the full list of winners.
Theme Overview
The theme of 2022 ESDC contest is: AI, AI Supported Machine Deep Learning System, and Edge Computing.
Each participant team will be provided an embedded IA platform as mandatory board: GNS-V40 Board based on Intel® Tiger Lake 11th Gen Core i5 CPU, with the corresponding Intel software. All teams must develop systems on the assigned board.
Project Showcase
Background
Shared laboratories can help small and medium-sized enterprises conduct production and research at low operational costs. University-industry collaborative shared labs also foster engineering skills in students. However, shared labs face several challenges: inadequate privacy protection, inefficient instrument management, and risks of equipment damage due to poor safety awareness, which can disrupt production and research, or even cause accidents.
To address these issues, we designed an Unmanned Open Shared Laboratory Based on Deep Learning. This system replaces traditional staff with terminal and monitoring devices, tracking instrument usage and anonymizing personnel actions for privacy protection. An intelligent management system ensures smooth, unmanned lab operation, with real-time alerts for unsafe behaviors.
Framework
The project builds an intelligent management system on an edge server, deploying deep learning models to detect instruments and personnel. The edge server controls the terminal devices on each lab bench.
It consists of three parts: server, edge server, and terminal devices.
Each lab bench is equipped with a terminal device to collect information and control the power supply of the instruments. The edge server, located in each lab, processes power usage data from the terminal devices and video data from the lab, issuing real-time control commands. The public server displays data from multiple labs to administrators, performing statistical analysis and future occupancy predictions.
Edge Server
We collect real-time video data from the lab using surveillance cameras and deploy a Yolo v5 model on the edge server to detect the location of lab personnel and instruments.
First, the system anonymizes video areas not containing instruments to ensure the privacy of operators’ actions. Second, it monitors the number of operators in the lab in real-time, ensuring that instruments are only used when operators are present. If no operators are detected for an extended period while equipment is running, the system triggers an alert.
Terminal Device
Abstract
We implemented three key functions for the terminal devices:
Power Control: Lab operators must register in the system and verify their identity via card swipe on the terminal device to power up and use instruments.
Current Detection: The terminal detects the instrument’s working current, and if the instrument is left on after the experiment, it triggers an alert.
Location Recognition: If an instrument is moved illegally, the terminal device emits a return reminder sound.
Implementation
The terminal device consists of a main control board, AC control board, position sensors, and a serial screen.
The terminal uses an ESP32 as the main controller, powered directly by AC and controlling power on/off via relays.
The AC control board monitors load current in real-time through a current transformer, combined with electromagnetic relays to ensure lab safety.
The terminal includes multiple RFID modules fixed to the lab bench to track instrument positions. By scanning RFID tags attached to the bottom of instruments, it detects any unauthorized movement. If an instrument is moved, the RFID module reports the signal loss to the terminal, alerts the administrator, and triggers an alarm sound.
The main control board also supports audio decoding and playback (MP3), allowing administrators to customize alert sounds.
Online Management System
We developed a backend management system on the server, featuring an equipment overview, detailed device information, deployment tools, and OTA firmware upgrade functionality. Administrators can register and log in to the management website to view or modify the information of the lab’s edge server and terminal devices.
