Coffee Break

Spectrometry has been used by physicists to study the properties of matter for more than a hundred years. Various scientific researches are carried out, quality control on production is carried out. In ecology, spectrometry is used to determine heavy metals in soil and water bodies. In metallurgy and chemical industry allows to control the quality of raw materials. In the jewelry industry spectrometry is necessary to measure the concentration of precious metals. It is well known that the measurement of spectra can be dated archaeological finds. We propose to use this amazing tool in the business for labeling of tradable goods. The method can be used in a variety of ways: from counterfeit inspection in the task of comparing the goods with the standard to quality control of large supplies. On the other hand, we can keep track of exclusive items such as expensive wines. At the moment, we conducted research for wine and coffee and were convinced of the high efficiency of the method. With our project we reached the world finals of Microsoft Imagine Cup, which will be held in Seattle at the end of July. By this time, we plan to assemble a compact device for measuring spectra and go beyond laboratory measurements. Next, we need to build a much larger database of spectra of substances. Try new types of products. We can potentially explore drugs, although this is a much more responsible job.

We develop a project for the recognition of varieties and taste characteristics of wine and coffee on the basis of their spectral characteristics using machine learning algorithms. Now we are shooting spectra of known brands in the laboratory, translating them into vector representation and training a gradient boosting model. Further, for the newly arrived spectra we can predict with high accuracy the marks corresponding to them. And it works very well. Using this approach, we come to an interesting idea. In fact, we can match each brand of goods with its unique digital representation in the form of its spectrum. As a natural substance barcode. And here opens an unlimited field for research.