Experimental bench automation + computer vision algorithm

Company: SINMEC (UFSC)

Technologies:
  • Python;
  • Computer vision;
  • Arduino;
  • LabVIEW;
  • git;
  • MATLAB;

At the lab I worked in during college we had this really cool experimental bench with water pumps, valves, an air diffuser, flow meters, cameras and LASERS:

Schematic of the experimental bench

My work was to automate it! So the guys teached me Python, LabVIEW and Arduino! And this was also my first time learning about git!

I. LOVED. IT.

After the bench was automated, then the work was to help develop a computer vision algorithm to measure flows by image. This was done in MATLAB and Python, mostly using the CV-2 package.

Check some images:
Image processing steps in bubble identification procedure
Velocity vectors drawn over some bubbles
Velocity vectors drawn over image, but for liquid phase

Honestly, with the explosion of neural networks in the last few years, our parametric approach to image segmentation is probably waaay outdated. But it was an amazing experience nonetheless!

If you'd like more detail, you can check our article in the link below:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0009250918303269

Absolutely do NOT use sci-hub to get access to it!