CSUSM: Project Management & Practice
Spring 2018 - Dr. Shaun-inn Wuu
Keep America Beautiful’s goal is make the environment clean and green. Through their partners, they are able to educate people on how they can do their part in improving the environment.
Keep America Beautiful needs an algorithm that will take an image from Google Streets and identify the litter visible in the picture. The organization currently has people volunteer in different zip codes to host a community clean up event. This is done without any statistical analysis. The statistical advantage that will be gained from the algorithm will be immense. It will allow them to understand which types of litter occur most in different zip codes and which zip codes contain the most litter. Keep America Beautiful will be able to take action in saving the environment in a much more efficient manner.
The team fixIT, proposed to design an algorithm that takes images from Google Streets to identify the presence of litter as much as possible. The algorithm would also display the accuracy of the identification.
| ID | Requirement | Details | Critical | Implemented? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SR-1 | Pattern recognition | Recognizes the differences in patterns in the image in order to conclude if there is an object in it | High | Yes |
| SR-2 | Object detection | Algorithm detects and localizes all the different objects in the picture using visual indicator (with the usage of pattern recognition) | High | Yes |
| SR-3 | Object classification | Algorithm identifies and classifies the litter within all the detected objects. Uses the human code for learning and improving | High | Yes |
| SR-4 | Accuracy | Evaluates the accuracy of each identified object and outputs into image (E.g. “70% sure this is litter”) | High | Yes |
FixIT chose to use the TensorFlow API to create the algorithm, Jupyter Notebook to interface the algorithm, and an Amazon Web Services Ubuntu server to train the algorithm. Using TensorFlow’s pre-trained model and its associated COCO dataset, the team was able to have a foundation for the object detection portion of the project’s development. The resulting algorithm of Prototype 1 boxed relatively every object that it detected within an input image, as exemplified in the provided image. Each detected object is surrounded by a box. The percentage indicated with each detected object is a confidence indicator detailing the accuracy of that specific detection. For example, the algorithm is 76% confident that it detected a kite in the picture provided. There is also a ranking system that was implemented, although unstandardized.
For Prototype 1, images were ranked from 1-4 based on the amount objected detected within a given image. This feature provided the foundation for the ranking of images based on its litter severity implemented later in Prototype 2. The final output of an image for the first prototype boxed the objects with the accuracy percentage and a ranking of the image.
After hours of research, fixIT found that a large dataset specific to litter was necessary for the algorithm’s litter recognition functionality. The dataset that the team had ultimately compiled consisted of images that were pulled from Google Streets. Manually pulling images from Google Streets proved to be a long process, so fixIT created a script that would gather thousands of images automatically. Once the images were acquired, the team needed to label them in order to commence the training process. Thus, FixIT pulled 10,000 images from Google Streets to be used for the dataset.
Keep America Beautiful provided a team of students who would label the images. This team used the labelImg software provided by fixIT for this purpose. The students initially separated the images using the following categories: images with litter and images without litter. They then labeled all of the images with litter. Once the students were done with labeling, fixIT needed to verify the validity of these images’ labels. As a result of the verification stage, the team found that some of the labeled images were not labeled well, and thus were of no use. At the end of this process, it was found thatabout 3,000 images were usable for the dataset. Although not all images provided were labeled, the 3,000 images that were proved to be especially useful due to the fact that in total, 9,000 pieces of litter were labeled.
The goal for Prototype 2 was to implement the litter recognition portion of the algorithm. In order to implement the recognition, however, the team would first need to train the labeled dataset according to its needs. The team first split the dataset into two sets; 80% of images were used for training and the rest was used for testing. FixIT trained the algorithm to certain amount of “steps”, producing a checkpoint file used to test the algorithm’s litter recognition accuracy. These checkpoint files indicated to the team when to stop the training and test the algorithm to verify the algorithm’s learning progress. If the team deemed the algorithm to be overtrained, the previously saved checkpoint file would be used.
One of the future enhancements is integrating the algorithm into a user interface. The user interface will visualize the output of the algorithm, such as the number of pieces detected and the ranking. It will allow for a smoother experience to run the algorithm for a user.
Currently the algorithm has a ranking system integrated. It ranks the image on a scale from 1 to 4 depending on the number of pieces of litter detected. A standard for this ranking system still needs to be developed.
For further development, the dataset can be split into different categories. At this point the algorithm only recognizes litter as a whole category. The dataset will need to be expanded, so the algorithm can differentiate between plastic, cans, paper, bottles, etc.
At this stage, the algorithm only processes a static image. Using the Google Streets API, the algorithm can be enhanced so that it uses dynamic street images. This would result in more accurate litter detection and analysis of the ranking since a street can be evaluated from different angles.
| Name | Profile |
|---|---|
| Chris B. | https://github.com/isaychris |
| Kathy M. | https://github.com/kathymayo5 |
| Greg S. | https://github.com/gregseda |
| Malia T. | https://github.com/curvySage |
| Andrew Z. | N/A |
| Vanessa J. | N/A |
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