2018 3rd International Conference for Convergence in Technology (I2CT)
The Gateway Hotel, XION Complex, Wakad Road, Pune, India. Apr 06-08, 2018
Smart Shelve Management System using IOT-A
Novel Approach
Nilesh Korde
Department of Computer Application
Shri Ramdeobaba College of Engineering and Management
Nagpur, India
nileshkorde11@gmail.com
Abstract— Kitchen plays a vital role in cooking the food. Food
is basically a necessary need of human being in its day to day
activities. A lot of food items are placed in a kitchen rack under
different shelves. There are various problems encountered by the
person which has the responsibility of cooking. The main
problem is that the food items which are required for cooking
need to be checked on a daily basis by the person. The person has
to check the quantities of the items regularly and have to place
the order accordingly to the food store. This situation consumes
more time and adds an overhead of checking food items on
regular basis. We have developed a novel IOT based smart
Infrastructure Management System which handles all the above
problems. This system will save a not only save a lot of time of the
user but also provide a smart way for placing an order.
Keywords—Infrastructure Management System, Pull out
shelves, Rack infrastructure
I.INTRODUCTION
Today internet is used by everyone. Even people who don’t
know about the internet are easily using applications of the
internet [1]. Managing kitchen infrastructure with the help of
internet has a lot of future scopes [2]. Daily activities in the
kitchen are not so easy. To make convenient and advance
kitchen we need to use sensors which will work on behalf of
humans [4]. Our focus is on rack infrastructure in kitchen,
which is very common and highly used in every kitchen. Rack
consist of many pull out shelves which are used for keeping
food items and need to open and closed on a regular basis. We
have proposed two types of sensors which are level and weight.
These sensors will show the level and weight of food items in
the shelves of every rack in a kitchen. The system will not
display the level and weight of food items but also by utilizing
internet, it will display different prices of the food items from
various food store of retailers or vendors. The name of the food
item has been already stored in the computer along with the
rack and shelves number. When the level and weight of the
food items will go low below a particular threshold, it will
signal the user about it and will search the food item on the
internet with different prices available at different vendors
online. This will make user free from worrying about tracking
the food items time to time. The status of the items will be
indicated time to time and will be searched online by the
computer. The user will only order food items according to the
choices shown and prices quoted.
978-1-5386-4273-3/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE
Abhijeet Thakare
Department of Computer Application
Shri Ramdeobaba College of Engineering and Management
Nagpur, India
abhijeet.thakare@gmail.com
II. RELATED WORK
Marcus et al. [5] has given the concept of information
acquisition system for novel interaction and sensing
infrastructure in the kitchen. Chen et al. [4] has given the
concept of weight sensors with counter and stove supporting
healthier cooking with weight analyzer of ingredients added.
Knanz et al. [1] has given the concept of the augmented
kitchen having special knife providing torque measurements
and 3D force, a sensor system with an inertial Xsens and
cutting board having an accelerometer. Patterson et al. [3]
used RFID tags for Objects (phones, box etc), Kitchen
Appliances (cups, knife etc) and Ingredients (jelly, milk etc).
These tags are sensed by the RFID reader on the wrist of the
user. Pham et al. [2] has provided a concept of augmented
kitchen adding an accelerometer to utensils for their activity
recognition. Abhishek Kumar et al. [6] has provided a concept
about a device which automatically starts the instruments in a
kitchen with the help of GPS and IOT 10 km away from
home. The time user reaches home the instruments would get
automatically witch off. K. Jayalakshmi et al. [7] developed a
food waste disposal machine which is an embedded system,
which measures and display the amount of food wasted and
recycled. Ajay Kumar et al. [8] developed a LPG trolley
having a GSM technology, which sends SMS to the kitchen
user and the distributor company about the gas cylinder
leakage.
III. MOTIVATION
The kitchen is generally managed by housewives, maids, and
servants. The kitchen is full of food and grocery items which
are stored in a specific structure. A person who is working in a
kitchen normally handles these structures and need to keep
track of food items stored in these structures. It is often noticed
that people working in kitchen want some food stuff but forgot
to bring it and when they required it they cannot get it on time.
Housewives are busy in day to day work generally face such
situations. To overcome such problem smart shelve
management system has been introduced.
IV. CONTRIBUTION
x A novel Architecture design which is used to sense the
grocery items from the shelves. If the item(s) quantity goes
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 below a particular threshold level, the system will cables are specifically made for this purpose and are easily
automatically search over the internet for the item and available and very affordable.
display all the possible choices of the items available to the
user from the different vendors or retailers.
x Effectively transferring a data which is sensed by a level
sensor and weight sensor through sensor cables and
communicating it to level sensing and weight sensing
devices.

V. KEY CHALLENGES
x Selecting appropriate sensors and devices for shelve
system.
x Making proper connection of sensors with their respective
devices.
x Connecting weight and level sensing devices connected to
Ethernet Hub and personal computer.
x Proper software for recording values from weight and level
sensing devices into excel sheet of a computer.
x Software for extracting information from excel sheet and
searching the information on the internet and displaying it.
VI. NOVEL ARCHITECTURE DESIGN
Our proposed system is mainly focused on rack infrastructure
in a kitchen. Pull out shelves are generally used in rack
infrastructure as it is convenient and affordable.
Figure 1 is a complete overview of our proposed smart kitchen
management system.
Design objectives of Proposed Management System:
x Making user free from worrying and tracking grocery
items in shelves of rack furniture.
x Making the user aware about the requirements in a
kitchen time to time.
x Giving user a readymade list of grocery items along Fig. 1: Proposed Shelve Management System
with a choice of price from different vendors.
x Saving users searching time on internet.
x Making kitchen a convenient place to work and serve. D. Weight Sensing Device
Weight sensing devices measure the weight from weight
VII. COMPONENTS OF PROPOSED MANAGEMENT SYSTEM sensors and indicates the value for the given item. These are
low cost and easily available balance scales.
A. Weight Sensor
Weight sensor is used to measure the weight of the given items
in a weighing pan. These sensors are so sensitive that they E. Level Sensing Device
measure minor changes for food items present in a given pan. Level sensing devices generally measuring the level of the
These sensors are low cost and easily available. given items from their respective shelves. These are low-cost
alternatives for level sensing with good accuracy.
B. Level Sensor
To measure the level of some given solid or liquid things in a F. Ethernet Converter
given shell or tank a specific level sensor is used. These Ethernet Converter is used for connecting multiple balance
sensitive devices are easily available, low cost and help in scale devices to a single computer in a LAN.Ethernet
measuring a quantity of the item in a given area. Converter is a low-cost alternative and easily available.
C. Sensing Cable
Sensing devices are generally very sensitive and need cables
which can carry these small changes very quickly. Sensing

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 VIII. DATA COMMUNICATION SOFTWARE

A. A&D WinCT

WinCT is opensource software. It is specifically designed for

balance devices and it is a window compatible software [10].
WinCT software RS-232 interface import weighing data
directly from balance device to an application such as excel
sheet or word file. RS-232 interface increases efficiency and
provides fast error-free storage of our weighing data directly to
our computer.

B. WebCal software

The WebCal software is an opensource software. It is

specifically designed for Level sensing devices and it is a
window compatible software. WebCal software import level
data directly from the level sensing device to an application
such as excel sheet or word file [9]. WebCal software increases
efficiency and provides fast error-free storage of our level data
directly to our computer.

C. Items Extraction Module (IEM)

IEM is Search query program written to extract URL from
different vendors and retailers based on data collected at excel
sheet. Excel sheet data provides information about required
food items from shelves.

Fig. 2: Work flow of Shelve management system

X. RESULT

Different values of weight and level for the specific food

Fig. 3: Work flow for various URL extraction of items
IX. WORKING OF NOVEL ARCHITECTURE DESIGN
The step to step working detail of our proposed smart shelve
management system is shown in figure 2.
item(s) from specific shelve(s) of a specific rack is collected
into excel sheet. Figure 4, 5 and 6 represents estimated
results. If the value of weight and level is below the specific
given value then it indicates ‘Y’ (see figure 4) for that food
item in a record. The data about food item from the excel
sheet with ‘Y’ is extracted by the Item Extraction module
(IEM) and search for the URL of different vendors and
retailers for that item on the internet. The Item Extraction
Module (see figure 3) returns all URL’s of different vendors
and retailers related to that food item(s). The user can simply
click on the respective links (see figure 5) and search for the
items for specific rate and quality (see figure 6) based on his
or her choice.

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 XI. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we proposed a novel architecture design for
shelves in a rack system at the kitchen. The system with the
help of weight and level sensor helps the user to identify
required food items in a specific shelve(s) of a specific rack
system. The Item Extraction module (IEM) helps the user by
searching for the URL’s of different vendors and retailers for
that item so that the user can easily select items of their choice
along with their respective prices on that links. The system
saves user time for searching and helps to work in kitchen
conveniently.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the Department of
Computer Application at Shri Ramdeobaba College of
Engineering and Management Nagpur.

REFERENCES
Fig. 4: Food items indicated by ‘Y’
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[9] https://www.flowline.com/webcal-software/
[10] http://www.scalenet.com/and/download.htm

Fig 6: Web page for Rice after clicking on URL