Gutter oil detection for food safety based on multi-feature machine learning and implementation on FPGA with approximate multipliers

PeerJ Comput Sci. 2021 Nov 16:7:e774. doi: 10.7717/peerj-cs.774. eCollection 2021.

Abstract

Since consuming gutter oil does great harm to people's health, the Food Safety Administration has always been seeking for a more effective and timely supervision. As laboratory tests consume much time, and existing field tests have excessive limitations, a more comprehensive method is in great need. This is the first time a study proposes machine learning algorithms for real-time gutter oil detection under multiple feature dimensions. Moreover, it is deployed on FPGA to be low-power and portable for actual use. Firstly, a variety of oil samples are generated by simulating the real detection environment. Next, based on previous studies, sensors are used to collect significant features that help distinguish gutter oil. Then, the acquired features are filtered and compared using a variety of classifiers. The best classification result is obtained by k-NN with an accuracy of 97.18%, and the algorithm is deployed to FPGA with no significant loss of accuracy. Power consumption is further reduced with the approximate multiplier we designed. Finally, the experimental results show that compared with all other platforms, the whole FPGA-based classification process consumes 4.77 µs and the power consumption is 65.62 mW. The dataset, source code and the 3D modeling file are all open-sourced.

Keywords: Approximate multiplier; FPGA; Gutter oil detection; K-NN; Machine learning.

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the Corporate Practice Training Program for young teachers in Jiangsu Polytechnic College (No.z0021). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.