Sick Ag

Achim Nuebling

Juergen Reichenbach

Thomas Schopp

Thomas Kaltenbach

A method for optically recognizing alphanumeric characters which involves storing polygonal outer contours and inner contours of reference characters and their relative geometrical positions as normalized reference curves transformed into a tangent space. Outer and inner contours of a character to be recognized are optically scanned and the scanned data is converted into binary data. The outer and inner contours of the character to be recognized are approximated as a polygon, and straight line segments of the polygon are normalized and transformed into a tangent space to generate character curves. The character to be recognized is compared to the reference characters in a rotation-invariant manner by shifting at least its character curve for the outer curve and the reference curves of the outer contours relative to each other in the tangent space until a surface area enclosed by the character curve and a given reference curve is at a minimum. The surface area between the character curves for the outer contour and the inner contours of the character to be recognized and respective reference curves for outer contours and the inner contours of the reference characters are used as a measure of the extent to which the character and the reference characters differ. The reference character which yields the smallest surface area between the character curves and the reference curves is then selected as the recognized character.

Method for optically recognizing alpha-numerical characters

A method of locating articles on a carrier plane on the basis of data obtained by a relative movement extending in a transport direction parallel to the carrier plane between a scanning plane and the articles and by repeatedly carrying out a total scan of the position of points on the articles and which include information on the position of the article points detected in the scanning plane, and on the basis of information on the relative position of the scanning plane and the articles in the direction of transport during a total scan. The method repeatedly reads the data on the position of the article points on the articles in the scanning plane and detects information on the relative position of the scanning plane and articles in the transport direction for a current total scan. The positions and extents of flanks of the articles, which substantially form a right angle with the carrier plane, are determined from the data of the current total scan. The positions and lengths of edges of the articles parallel to the carrier plane are determined on the basis of the positions and extents of the flanks as well as the information on the relative position of the scanning plane and the articles in the transport direction in the current total scan and in preceding total scans. Objects corresponding to articles are defined from the positions and lengths of the edges parallel to the carrier plane.

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Emmendingen, Germany

Achim Nuebling