The situation
A refinery buys gold jewellery from many sources. Separating stone weight from gold weight and checking purity by hand is slow and error-prone.
Automated gold weight and purity detection
Automated gold weighing, gemstone detection and purity testing, to cut manual handling and error when buying jewellery.
A gold refinery buying from banks, pawnbrokers and auctions
01 · Context
02 · Challenge
What had to be true
Estimate the weight of gemstones from images, subtract it from the gross weight, and measure purity automatically.
03 · What we built
The system
- Integration with a gold weighing scale for gross weight
- Gemstone detection to spot synthetic stones and estimate their weight from shape and colour
- Image pre-processing to remove noise, then region growing, colour segmentation, size filtering, contouring and shape detection
- Predictive analysis to estimate gemstone weight, so gold weight is calculated automatically
- Spectrometer integration: purity calculated from the percentage composition of metals
04 Architecture
How it works, step by step.
Step through the system, or let it play.
- Jewellery weighed
- Gemstones detected and segmented
- Stone weight estimated
- Gold weight calculated
- Purity measured
05 · Outcome
Less manual handling and fewer errors when valuing gold. The product is being adapted for Gold ATMs that dispense cash when jewellery is accepted.
06 · Stack
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