WiCoSens: a wearable, intelligent color sensing platform for non-invasive storage shelf identification

Reaching out onto a shelf or into a cabinet and taking something out is a fundamental part of many activities. In our daily life we carry out several picking and placing actions from/to shelves, cupboards, racks, containers, etc. With enough instrumentation identifying the shelf from which something has been taken is not a fundamental problem. However, reliably detecting specific shelf from which something has been taken with an unobtrusive and cheap setup remains, in general, an open problem. As a solution we developed WiCoSens - a wrist worn color sensor (CS) array to detect color coded surfaces. We describe the hardware design, the identification method and a simple color coded shelf setup to evaluate the system. Initial results show 100% accuracy with user independent training.