Tracks of Bulk Material Transported on a Conveyor Belt

This data set comprises tracks of different materials (balls, cylinders, peppercorns, and wheat grains) on a conveyor belt. The tracks were obtained by

recording images of transported bulk material on the small-scale optical belt sorter Tablesort,

extracting the centroids of the bulk materials' particles,

employing a multitarget tracker to extract the tracks of the particles.

In total, the data include the tracks of 7712 balls, 19 200 cylinders, 7170 peppercorns, and 8702 wheat grains. The raw images were recorded on a Bonito CL-400C. The resolution is 2320 x 1720 pixels and each pixel is approximately 0.056 mm long in world coordinates. The frame rate is 192.9 Hz. A thorough description of the Tablesort system can be found in

Georg Maier, Florian Pfaff, Christoph Pieper, Robin Gruna, Benjamin Noack, Harald Kruggel-Emden, Thomas Längle, Uwe D. Hanebeck, Jürgen Beyerer, Experimental Evaluation of a Novel Sensor-Based Sorting Approach Featuring Predictive Real-Time Multiobject Tracking, Transactions on Industrial Electronics, February 2020.

See also the project website.

For the datasets of raw images, see:

Images of Balls Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 01 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5095500
Images of Balls Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 02 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5095562
Images of Balls Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 03 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5095640
Images of Balls Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 04 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5096551
Images of Balls Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 05 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5096747
Images of Balls Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 06 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5097011
Images of Balls Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 07 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5102938
Images of Balls Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 08 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5102962
Images of Balls Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 09 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5103015
Images of Balls Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 10 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5103031
Images of Balls Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 11 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5104865
Images of Balls Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 12 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5104890
Images of Balls Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 13 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5104907
Images of Balls Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 14 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5105732
Images of Balls Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 15 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5105782

Images of Cylinders Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 01 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5141471
Images of Cylinders Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 02 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5142415
Images of Cylinders Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 03 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5142489
Images of Cylinders Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 04 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5142540
Images of Cylinders Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 05 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5142639
Images of Cylinders Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 06 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5142705
Images of Cylinders Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 07 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5142738
Images of Cylinders Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 08 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5142781
Images of Cylinders Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 09 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5142812
Images of Cylinders Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 10 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5145279
Images of Cylinders Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 11 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5145385

Images of Peppercorns Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 01 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5140321
Images of Peppercorns Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 02 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5140358
Images of Peppercorns Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 03 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5138524
Images of Peppercorns Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 04 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5140378
Images of Peppercorns Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 05 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5140411
Images of Peppercorns Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 06 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5140436
Images of Peppercorns Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 07 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5140456
Images of Peppercorns Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 08 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5140863
Images of Peppercorns Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 09 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5140968
Images of Peppercorns Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 10 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5141033
Images of Peppercorns Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 11 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5141143
Images of Peppercorns Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 12 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5141210
Images of Peppercorns Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 13 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5141382

Images of Wheat Grains Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 01 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5037096
Images of Wheat Grains Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 02 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5076022
Images of Wheat Grains Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 03 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5076129
Images of Wheat Grains Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 04 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5076163
Images of Wheat Grains Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 05 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5076229
Images of Wheat Grains Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 06 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5076251
Images of Wheat Grains Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 07 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5080533
Images of Wheat Grains Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 08 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5080547
Images of Wheat Grains Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 09 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5081016
Images of Wheat Grains Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 10 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5081063
Images of Wheat Grains Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 11 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5091432
Images of Wheat Grains Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 12 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5091458
Images of Wheat Grains Transported on a Conveyor Belt - Recording 13 - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5091484

The multitarget tracker used can be found at https://github.com/KIT-ISAS/TracksortAlgorithm.

Algorithms for two key challenges can be developed and evaluated on the data sets:

Multitarget tracking for predicting the particle’s motion. This can be used to enhance the separation of optical sorters. For further details on this, see the publications

Florian Pfaff, Marcus Baum, Benjamin Noack, Uwe D. Hanebeck, Robin Gruna, Thomas Längle, Jürgen Beyerer,
TrackSort: Predictive Tracking for Sorting Uncooperative Bulk Materials,
Proceedings of the 2015 IEEE International Conference on Multisensor Fusion and Integration for Intelligent Systems (MFI 2015), San Diego, California, USA, September 2015.

Florian Pfaff, Christoph Pieper, Georg Maier, Benjamin Noack, Robin Gruna, Harald Kruggel-Emden, Uwe D. Hanebeck, Siegmar Wirtz, Viktor Scherer, Thomas Längle, Jürgen Beyerer,
Predictive Tracking with Improved Motion Models for Optical Belt Sorting,
at – Automatisierungstechnik, April 2020.

Classification of particles. The classification may use a multitarget tracker to accumulate visual features over time. One can also use the information on the trajectory to classify the particles. For information on this, refer to

Georg Maier, Florian Pfaff, Florian Becker, Christoph Pieper, Robin Gruna, Benjamin Noack, Harald Kruggel-Emden, Thomas Längle, Uwe D. Hanebeck, Siegmar Wirtz, Viktor Scherer, Jürgen Beyerer,
Improving Material Characterization in Sensor-Based Sorting by Utilizing Motion Information,
Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on Optical Characterization of Materials (OCM 2017), Karlsruhe, Germany, March 2017.

Georg Maier, Florian Pfaff, Florian Becker, Christoph Pieper, Robin Gruna, Benjamin Noack, Harald Kruggel-Emden, Thomas Längle, Uwe D. Hanebeck, Siegmar Wirtz, Viktor Scherer, Jürgen Beyerer,
Motion-Based Material Characterization in Sensor-Based Sorting, 
tm – Technisches Messen, De Gruyter, October 2017.

To this date, publications that used these data include

Daniel Pollithy, Marcel Reith-Braun, Florian Pfaff, Uwe D. Hanebeck,
Estimating Uncertainties of Recurrent Neural Networks in Application to Multitarget Tracking,
Proceedings of the 2020 IEEE International Conference on Multisensor Fusion and Integration for Intelligent Systems (MFI 2020), Virtual, September 2020.

The used CSV format uses commas as separators. The first line is the header. The number of columns depends on the highest track id. The columns provide the x- and y-coordinates alternatingly, as described in the header. The x-axis is aligned orthogonal to the transport direction, while the y-axis goes along the transport direction. The number of rows corresponds to the length of the longest track that appears in the file. Tracks that are already terminated up to that point are padded with "NaN"s. The values are in pixels.

Acknowledgment

The IGF project 20354 N of the research association Forschungs-Gesellschaft Verfahrens-Technik e.V. (GVT) was supported via the AiF in a program to promote the Industrial Community Research and Development (IGF) by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy on the basis of a resolution of the German Bundestag.