Automatic image analysis and generation of digital residential floor plans

电气计划的设计在所有住宅和商业建筑/改造项目中起着重要作用。电气计划由电气设计师手动创建，他们必须遵循加拿大电气法规和行业最佳实践。设计师决定什么类型的电气设备（如电灯开关，插座等）以及它们应根据建筑平面图放置的位置。这是一项耗时的任务，容易出现错误和不一致。没有智能的，上下文敏感的软件工具能够帮助设计人员加快和简化电气平面图设计过程。在这项研究中，我们提出了通过计算机视觉方法自动化电气设计过程。我们将开发一个自动化系统，该系统将允许计算机通过处理视觉信息来分析和理解建筑平面图及其嵌入数据的图像。相关的数据，如建筑符号，建筑结构，房间类型和形状，将被自动检索。这些信息将用于通过确定所需的电气设备及其最佳位置来生成电气计划。该系统将能够学习和适应相当数量的图形符号类型和惯例，因为在平面图中没有标准化。将拟议的系统集成到当前的电气设计工作流程中将为加拿大工业带来许多优势。它将确保设计的一致性，提高生产力，产生具有成本效益的解决方案，并为业界带来最新的计算机技术，以获得明显的竞争优势。此外，建筑平面图的自动分析为电气设计之外的许多其他应用铺平了道路，例如管道设计。该项目的新奇还将填补在图形丰富的文档分析研究中的许多现有空白。

The design of electrical plans plays an important role in all residential and commercial construction/renovation projects. Electrical plans are created manually by electrical designers who must follow the Canadian Electrical Code and industry best practices. The designers decide what type of electrical devices (e.g. light switches, outlets, etc.) are required and where they should be located based on the architectural floor plans. This is a time consuming task, which is prone to errors and inconsistencies. There is no intelligent, context-sensitive software tool able to help designers expedite and streamline the electrical plan design process.In this research, we propose to automate the electrical design process through computer vision methods. We will develop an automated system that will allow a computer to analyze and understand images of architectural floor plans and their embedded data by processing visual information. Relevant data, such as architectural symbols, building structures, and room types and shapes, will be retrieved automatically. This information will be used to generate the electrical plans by determining the required electrical devices as well as their optimal placement. The system will be able to learn and adapt to a considerable number of graphical notation types and conventions, as there is no standardization in the floor plans.Integrating the proposed system into the current electrical design workflow will bring many advantages to the Canadian industry. It will ensure consistency in the designs, increase productivity, generate cost-effective solutions, and bring the latest computer technologies to the industry for a clear competitive edge. Moreover, the automatic analysis of architectural floor plans paves the way for many other applications besides electrical design, such as plumbing design. The novelty of this project will also allow to fill many existing gaps in the research on graphics-rich document analysis.