Background.Identifying the quality of the products in the manufacturing industry is a challenging task. Manufacturers use needles to print unique numbers on the products to differentiate between good and bad quality products. However, identi- fying these needle printed characters can be difficult. Hence, new technologies like deep learning and optical character recognition (OCR) are used to identify these characters. Objective.The primary ob jective of this thesis is to identify the needle-printed characters on steel bars. This ob jective is divided into two sub-ob jectives. The first sub-ob jective is to identify the region of interest on the steel bars and extract it from the images. The second sub-ob jective is to identify the characters on the steel bars from the extracted images. The YOLOV5 and YOLOV5-obb ob ject detection algorithms are used to achieve these ob jectives. Method. Literature review was performed at first to select the algorithms, then the research was to collect the dataset, which was provided by OVAKO. The dataset included 1000 old images and 3000 new images of steel bars. To answer the RQ2, at first existing OCR techniques were used on the old images which had low accuracy levels. So, the YOLOV5 algorithm was used on old images to detect the region of interest. Different rotation techniques are applied to the cropped images(cropped after the bounding box is detected) no promising result is observed so YOLOV5 at the character level is used in identifying the characters, the results are unsatisfactory. To achieve this, YOLOV5-obb was used on the new images, which resulted in good accuracy levels. Results. Accuracy and mAP are used to assess the performance of OCRs and selected ob ject detection algorithms. The current study proved Existing OCR was also used in the extraction, however, it had an accuracy of 0%, which implies it failed to identify characters. With a mAP of 0.95, YOLOV5 is good at extracting cropped images but fails to identify the characters. When YOLOV5-obb is used for attaining orientation, it achieves a mAP of 0.93. Due to time constraint, the last part of the thesis was not implemented. Conclusion. The present research employed YOLOV5 and YOLOV5-obb ob ject detection algorithms to identify needle-printed characters on steel bars. By first se- lecting the region of interest and then extracting images, the study ob jectives were met. Finally, character-level identification was performed on the old images using the YOLOV5 technique and on the new images using the YOLOV5-obb algorithm, with promising results

Currently the entire South African industry of Environmental Control Officers (ECOs) is unregulated, yet ECOs have the important task of checking and verifying compliance to environmental regulatory and performance requirements. According to international best practice principles for Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), the process should be made credible through independent checks and verification (IAIA, 1999:3). According to the Environmental Impact Assessment Management Strategy Subtheme 5, quality assurance can only be attained when practitioners fulfil competence and ethical practice criteria. In this document the South African Department of Environmental Affairs (SADEA) also noted that there is currently no home for ECOs, yet this is where effective monitoring and enforcement could significantly improve environmental outcomes. The central objective of this dissertation was to investigate the need for regulation of the South African ECO industry. Data obtained from the questionnaires indicated that 100% of respondents were in agreement that there is a need for regulation of the South African ECO industry. One of the key motivational factors identified by respondents was quality assurance, which is important, as the environmental legislative regime changes constantly. Various other factors were identified other than quality assurance and were labelled “drivers”. These include establishment of minimum standards in respect of qualifications and/or experience (core competencies), establishment of a professional code of conduct and ethics that enhances accountability and professionalism, skills improvement through continual professional development (CPD), enhancement of credibility, independence of practitioners, enhancement of skills for capacity building, protection of clients against substandard work and overall lack of professionalism, and finally creation of a source of information support and interaction. It was important to determine what drives the regulation of an industry, in order to establish whether the South African ECO industry has similar drivers justifying regulation. The establishment of qualification and competency requirements was an important objective of this research, as a set of these requirements is an essential toolkit for operating ECOs and key stakeholders of the industry. Various registration and competence requirements for ECOs were identified from the literature review and responses to the questionnaires and interviews. With this research the author also intended to establish which current accreditation bodies could be considered for registration of ECOs and regulation of the South African ECO industry. The dissertation concludes by emphasising the importance of regulating the South African ECO industry, as this will ensure that compliance monitoring takes place effectively. / M Environmental Management, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Currently the entire South African industry of Environmental Control Officers (ECOs) is unregulated, yet ECOs have the important task of checking and verifying compliance to environmental regulatory and performance requirements. According to international best practice principles for Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), the process should be made credible through independent checks and verification (IAIA, 1999:3). According to the Environmental Impact Assessment Management Strategy Subtheme 5, quality assurance can only be attained when practitioners fulfil competence and ethical practice criteria. In this document the South African Department of Environmental Affairs (SADEA) also noted that there is currently no home for ECOs, yet this is where effective monitoring and enforcement could significantly improve environmental outcomes. The central objective of this dissertation was to investigate the need for regulation of the South African ECO industry. Data obtained from the questionnaires indicated that 100% of respondents were in agreement that there is a need for regulation of the South African ECO industry. One of the key motivational factors identified by respondents was quality assurance, which is important, as the environmental legislative regime changes constantly. Various other factors were identified other than quality assurance and were labelled “drivers”. These include establishment of minimum standards in respect of qualifications and/or experience (core competencies), establishment of a professional code of conduct and ethics that enhances accountability and professionalism, skills improvement through continual professional development (CPD), enhancement of credibility, independence of practitioners, enhancement of skills for capacity building, protection of clients against substandard work and overall lack of professionalism, and finally creation of a source of information support and interaction. It was important to determine what drives the regulation of an industry, in order to establish whether the South African ECO industry has similar drivers justifying regulation. The establishment of qualification and competency requirements was an important objective of this research, as a set of these requirements is an essential toolkit for operating ECOs and key stakeholders of the industry. Various registration and competence requirements for ECOs were identified from the literature review and responses to the questionnaires and interviews. With this research the author also intended to establish which current accreditation bodies could be considered for registration of ECOs and regulation of the South African ECO industry. The dissertation concludes by emphasising the importance of regulating the South African ECO industry, as this will ensure that compliance monitoring takes place effectively. / M Environmental Management, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

In this report, an object-space solution to occluder fusion of OBB occluders is explored. Two different approaches are considered were the object-space fusion is reduced to a 2D problem. The first approach finds axis-aligned silhouettes within the projection of occluder OBBs which are then fused together creating large axis-aligned silhouettes. The other approach creates concave hulls of the projected OBB silhouettes from which convex inscribed silhouettes are then found. These silhouettes are then converted back to object-space where shadow frusta created around the silhouettes are used for the culling operation. The effectiveness of the two approaches is evaluated considering the amount of culled geometry. It is shown that fused convex silhouettes are needed to produce competitive results.

No description available.