Smart retail SKUs checkout using improved residual network

Abstract

Intelligent signal processing in unmanned stores enhances operational efficiency, notably through automated SKUs (Stock Keeping Units) recognition, which expedites customer checkout. Distinguishing itself from generic detection algorithms, the retail product detection algorithm addresses challenges like densely arranged items, varying scales, large quantities, and product similarities. To mitigate these challenges, firstly we propose a novel boundary regression neural network architecture, which enhances the detection of bounding box in dense arrangement, minimizing computational costs and parameter sizes. Secondly, we propose a novel loss function for hierarchical detection, addressing imbalances in positive and negative samples. Thirdly, we enhance the conventional non-maximum suppression (NMS) with weighted non-maximum suppression (WNMS), tying NMS ranking scores to candidate box accuracy. Experimental results on SKU-110K and RPC datasets, two public available databases, show that the proposed SKUs recognition algorithm provides improved reliablity and efficiency over existing methods.