Method of sorting postal articles into a sorting frame with the sorted articles being counted automatically

Abstract

A method of sorting postal articles into a postal sorting frame comprising sorting slots, in which method said articles to be sorted are placed in a stack, and the articles are taken one-by-one from the top of the stack so as to place each of them in a sorting slot, and digital images of the top of the stack are formed automatically at a certain rate, is characterized by the following steps: a) recording said digital images in the memory of a data-processing unit; b) mutually comparing said digital images on the basis of a certain graphical resemblance criterion, so as to form image models, each of which is representative of similar-looking digital images; c) associating each image model with a persistence time; and d) applying a time filter to said image models so as to eliminate those models whose persistence time is less than a certain threshold value, the remaining number of models serving to count the sorted postal articles automatically.