Hello all,

Firmware engineer dipping their toes into the vast world of machine learning here. A friend works at our local library and was telling me about how the worst part of her job is when people put backs on the shelves themselves as they often do it wrong. So she has to scan each row going book by book and find books out of order. It’s time consuming and mentally draining to do for a long period of time. I wonder if it would be possible to make an app on her phone that would read the white dewey decimal system tags on the spines of the books and figure out if a book was out of order? I’ve taken some sample footage and noticed a few problems:
– Passing the camera over rows tends to induce some blur and while I think it could reduced or unblurred, it does make it hard.
– Some books are too thin for the whole tag and it’s impossible to read (I don’t know a way to handle that)

Here’s what I’m currently thinking, tell me if I’m totally off track.

1. Process image and reduce blur and adjust to high constrast
2. Cut out “labels” on the books and create small B&W images with the source location of where they came from.
3. Rotate the label as needed (sometimes they are at a 90 degree angle)
4. OCR the label and categorize it into the dewey

Is this feasible with some degree of accuracy? Ultimately, I’d just want to highlight the book that’s out of order in red. I don’t need to do anything more complicated.