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:
Jan. 11, 2000
Filed:
Sep. 18, 1997
Lingnan Liu, Mill Creek, WA (US);
Intermec IP Corporation, Beverly Hills, CA (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus employs a production system-like rule based routine to process signals, such as reflectance signals produced from machine-readable symbols (e.g., bar code symbols). Relevant features data is extracted from each peak or valley in the signal, such as width, height, and relative size. The routine then uses the extracted data for each peak and valley with a set of rules to refine the reflectance signals. Under one or more iterations, the routine selects and resolves conflicting rules and applies resulting rules to process the signal. The processed signal can then be more readily decoded. The routine preferably processes a reflectance signal in portions, such as on a codeword-by-codeword basis. Under an alternative embodiment, a fuzzy inference engine provides sets of values for height, width and relative size. Therefrom rules are applied to determine a size of each peak and valley in the signal.