After looking at the number of keys I had on my keyring for the same building, and making some quick comparisons, I started thinking about the possibility of generating a master key from the quite freely distributed zone keys, for academic reasons alone. This would be an interesting lesson in image processing.
The General Idea:
- Scan each key in colour/grayscale
- Automatically convert image into a 1-bit profile of the key
- Automatically Rotate image so that all keys are in the same orientation
- Automatically section the key to isolate the teeth
- Find the central location on each tooth from key sets (all local max/min)
- Define Integer values for all tooth-height possibilities
- Define each key as a set of these integer values
- Compare similarities and differences
- Option to precategorize with key zone