Automatic equipment

Abstract

Automatic equipment, in which each of a plurality of identical devices is positioned automatically to co-operate with processing means and/or test probes, has a TV camera considered as being arranged to move in a raster scan over each device, and to provide signals in response to detecting boundaries of an orthogonal pattern of device features. Initially, with a unique pattern of feature boundaries having been determined, and possibly by reference to the representation, provided by a display unit driven by the camera, of a manually, accurately, located device, there is caused to be generated, in each frame scan period, pairs of signals, individually corresponding to, and representative of a defined location for, a determined feature boundary, each signal representing a marker boundary as if detected by the camera. For each subsequent device, automatically, at least, coarsely positioned, if each determined feature boundary is detected by discriminating means, operating upon the corresponding pair of signals and the signal from the camera in response to detecting the determined feature boundary, not to be within a threshold distance of its defined location, the device is caused to be displaced automatically along the appropriate orthogonal axis, or axes, to become capable of co-operating with the processing means and/or test probes. The latter condition is obtained when the discriminating means detects that each of the determined feature boundaries are within the threshold distances of their defined locations.