The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Apr. 25, 1995
Filed:
Feb. 09, 1994
Srinivasa Rao Datari, Medford, OR (US);
Simco/Ramic Corporation, Medford, OR (US);
Abstract
An apparatus and a method sort items, such as pickles, having defective shapes, such as holes. A video camera scans moving items and acquires lines of image data including item-colored data and background-colored data. The lines of image data are sent to an image processor and compiled into a 64 line 'frame' of image data that are further processed to identify the coordinates of individual items and to compute the size of each item. Because holes in an item are the same color as the background color, the invention provides means of differentiating holes from the background. A 'hole-bounding box' is scaled to fit within the item position coordinates. The number of background-colored pixels inside the hole-bounding box is computed and compared to a user-defined threshold number. An item is classified as defective if the threshold number is exceeded. Whenever the image processor classifies an item as defective, centroid position coordinates of the item are reported to a master processor for subsequent rejection of the item.