Shelfscanner missions

In some of our mission we'll ask you to take photos using our Shelfscanner. This is because these photos need to meet certain requirements in order for us to be able to process them. In this article you can read how to use the shelfscanner and what the requirements of these photos are.

In this video you can see how you should use the Shelfscanner. Depending on the store layout you can choose to take full photos or break your photos up in sections, if you have too little space.

In the image below, you can see two important aspects of the shelfscanner:

Direction: the numbers show the direction in which the photos need to be taken. If you can’t fit the entire length of the shelf into one photo, you can split the shelf into two parts. When taking photos, you need to start at the top, going down to the bottom, then right, up etc.

Overlapping: The second aspect is the ‘overlapping’. It’s very important we can clearly judge the end of a shelf and the beginning of a new one and want to see a few duplicate products to judge this.

Key elements when taking shelf scanner photos

We want to capture every single product that is visible on the shelves of a particular section/ category. When you’re taking the photos as explained above, please remember:

• To fully capture the category: make sure we can fully see the shelves horizontally and vertically. No cropped sides. Cropped sides/cut off sides means that valuable information about the products will be lost.
• To capture all products that belong to the category: if we're looking for BodyWash products we want to see all products that belong to this category and not just a few. If products are located on different shelves, make sure to capture these too (as a full shelf).
• To make sure the products of the bottom shelf or right shelf are clearly visible, so we can judge it was indeed the end of the shelf. The actual shelf itself also needs to be visible for our system to take it into account
• To make sure to photograph the shelf without any obstacles blocking the view, otherwise we can’t see the products. (we can accept it if the obstacle can't be moved)
• To take photos from left to right. We can’t accept photos that are mixed (from right to left for example).
• To mind the lighting of the photo. Too much lighting will make text on the product not readable
• To photograph the shelf from a constant distance
• To photograph the shelves from the front to minimise your photos being too angled. If the photos are too angled, we can’t mark the products as they’re often cropped or the text on the product is unidentifiable.

Good examples

Below you can find two examples of shelf photos that were taken in the correct way. You can clearly see all products, all shelves, no angles etc.

Incorrect use of shelfscanner

Photo quality is particularly important in shelfscanner missions as we need to have a full view of the shelf from left to right and top to bottom. Without this full view our systems are unable to calculate certain metrics. Shelfscanner photos can be invalidated/sent back as incomplete for a wide range of photo quality reasons like: cropped/cut off shelf, angled photos, bad lighting (under exposed or over exposed), blurriness, irrelevant products and taking photos from right to left (instead of left to right)

Cropped shelf

From the picture we can see that the bottom half of the shelf is missing and has been cut off by the Eye when capturing. It's important that shelves aren't cut off and we can see all shelves, top to bottom.

Angled photos

We can accept a slight angle, though in some cases the angle makes us unable to judge which products are on the shelf + our image recognition will have difficult 'reading' the image. The below example shows an example of this.

Bad lighting

If a photo is over- or underexposed, this makes us unable to judge which product it is.

Taking photos from right to left

It's very important you use the shelfscanner as intended and always take photo from LEFT to RIGHT, otherwise we have to reject your photos.