Japan Tobacco Inc.

Toshiba Engineering Corporation

Hiroyoshi Suda

Keisuke Minami

Tsuyoshi Futamura

Yuzuru Sakuma

Minoru Fujita

Kouzou Ichiba

An apparatus for automatically taking in smoke of rolled tobaccos and automatically analyzing the smoke includes a mounting and demounting unit for mounting a rolled tobacco in and demounting the same from each smoke inlet provided in a main body, an end position detecting unit for detecting the tip of each rolled tobacco, an extinguishing position detecting unit for detecting the extinguishing position of each rolled tobacco, a lighting unit for lighting the tip of each rolled tobacco, cutting-off unit for cutting off the burnt portion of each rolled tobacco at its extinguishing portion, and an operating unit for moving the lighting unit to the tip of each rolled tobacco held in the respective smoke inlet and detected by the tip position detecting unit so as to light the tip of the rolled tobacco and for causing the extinguishing position detecting unit to detect that the rolled tobacco is burning at its extinguishing position is burning, and for causing the cutting-off unit to cut off the burnt portion of the rolled tobacco.

Apparatus for automatically taking in smoke of rolled tobaccos and

An apparatus for automatically inspecting abnormalities in the external surface of cylindrical objects. The apparatus inspects the appearance of a cylindrical object using image processing. The apparatus includes a transporter and a CCD camera. The transporter rotates the cylindrical object about an axis of the cylindrical object. The CCD camera picks up images showing the appearance of the inspected cylindrical object. The images include picture elements, and each picture element has a corresponding luminance. The apparatus further includes a controller. The controller generates at least one masking window to mask at least one predetermined portion of at least one image; generates at least one luminance sum for each image by adding, for each image, the luminance of a predetermined number of picture elements in unmasked portions of the image; compares each luminance sum to a predetermined threshold; and judges whether the cylindrical object includes a defect based on a result of each comparison.

Apparatus for inspecting appearance of cylindrical objects

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Hiratsuka, Japan

Hiroyoshi Suda