After playing around with my AI coin grading project for half a year, I've started to sour on the idea. I think Technical Grading will eventually be accurate enough to be useful, but I don't think the market will accept it. PCGS, NGC, and CAC are just too dominant. People want and trust the judgment of these companies. I just can't see AI grading taking off in a big manner. But...after testing AI over a thousand times, I noticed that it's extremely accurate in identifying coins 99% of the time. Specifically identifying the series, year, and mintmark. [For US and World Coins, not medals or tokens. Nor varieties/errors] I've been working towards a robotics system to identify and sort coins using ROS2, a Raspberry Pi, a mini camera for the AI to take and analyze images, and Legos bricks. Consider it Numi v2. The goal is to build a coin-sorting robot that uses AI to intelligently sort coins. Imagine a reverse Coinstar that spits back out valuable coins. My friends working at coin shops lament about all the bulk coins coming in that they don't have time to sort. Such as wheat cents and silver world coins. Which is a bummer because they're leaving a bunch of money on the table. I'm starting with wheat cents, but the goal is to work towards sorting other US coins, silver world coins, and eventually identifying varieties & errors. Attached are images of the initial designs I built using Lego Studio Designer. I'll be building the physical prototype over the next few weeks. What would you want out of a coin-sorting machine? How could this machine help you or your shop?
There are coin sorter/counters on the market already that that can sort coin by size and metal content. They can be calibrated to kick out silver or off size coins. There are currency counters that detect counterfeits that also read and print out the serial numbers of the bills at 800 bills per minute. I would think thank by combining the technologies that a sorter could more accurately read the coin it is just the cost factor of the machine that would make it out of reach of most.
Work on the Numi v2.0 prototype is going strong. I'm still waiting on a few remaining Lego pieces, but it's coming together. It was fun bringing this to my local coin club tonight to get feedback.
