Roastpic, a cutting-edge photo-based technology developed by two students at the University of California, Davis, aims to revolutionize the quality control processes in the coffee supply chain. In partnership with data integration service Fabscale, Roastpic offers seamless integration with a simple snapshot.
Traditionally, professionals in the coffee industry have invested significant time and effort in quality control, meticulously selecting the right colour cherry, ensuring correct bean size, and identifying defective beans. These tasks have historically relied on manual inspection, but Roastpic seeks to transform this practice with its innovative app designed for analysing coffee samples through a straightforward photo-taking process.
Roastpic Co-founder and Backend Software Engineer Zhuoheng Li explains that the app efficiently predicts the entire coffee sample based on just one photo. This advanced technology is poised to have a global impact, providing instant and accurate statistics for coffee samples worldwide.
The process involves placing a coffee sample on the Roastpic Photosheet, equipped with individual QR codes for data collection. The sheet features colour charts, sample colour squares, and measurement scales to adjust for lighting variations. Users then take a photo of the chart with the coffee bean and upload it to the app, which quickly generates the required data in just five seconds.
To validate the accuracy of Roastpic’s results, UC Davis students manually measured green and roasted beans, achieving near-identical outcomes, albeit in a much longer timeframe. Additionally, the app enables users to assess if the coffee meets their target specifications, with plans to implement a comparison feature for quick assessments against exemplar batches.
Roastpic employs artificial intelligence to identify defects in the coffee sample, presenting non-defective beans with a green outline and defective beans with a red outline, along with detailed statistics for each bean. The app’s meticulous design, overseen by Roastpic’s Head of Design Mengqi Cao, ensures an optimal user experience while delivering comprehensive statistical insights.
The concept for Roastpic originated from the vision of UC Davis Coffee Center Co-founder and Professor Bill Ristenpart, who aimed to alleviate the manual labour involved in quality control within the coffee industry. With its potential to significantly reduce the time and effort required for inspections, Roastpic is poised to offer immense value for both single roasters and large-scale operations.
Roastpic is set to be launched in three formats, including a free version for coffee enthusiasts, a premium version that offers more accurate data, and a professional version in collaboration with Fabscale, targeted at larger businesses. The professional version will feature a multi-user photo station known as the Coffee Vision System, which integrates seamlessly with Fabscale’s Manufacturing Execution System to provide comprehensive insights into new and past roasts.
The impending launch of Roastpic has generated anticipation within the industry, with its official debut set to take place at the Specialty Coffee Expo in Chicago in April 2024. As the coffee industry eagerly awaits the arrival of this groundbreaking technology, the partnership between Roastpic and Fabscale is poised to usher in a new era of efficiency and precision in the art of coffee roasting and quality control. For further details, please visit www.roastpic.com and www.fabscale.com/features-roastpic.
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