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:
Aug. 14, 2001
Filed:
Jun. 24, 1998
Anthony James Cronshaw, Cambridge, GB;
Christopher James Hodges, Cambridge, GB;
Mark Robson Humphries, Saffron Walden, GB;
David Livingstone, Royston, GB;
Stephen Peter Woodall, Cheshire, GB;
Bernardus Cornelis Johannes Landman, Boskoop, NL;
Heineken Technical Services B.V., Amsterdam, NL;
Abstract
This invention provides a method and apparatus (,) for detecting small glass particles (,) in bottles (,) filled with beer (,). The beer (,) is caused to rotate with respect to the bottle (,), and successive images are obtained from the bottle by means of a CCD-camera (,) which is arranged such that its optical axis (,) makes an angle &agr; of about 135° with the axis (,) of the bottle (,), which is illuminated from below. The successive images are subtracted from each other to detect refracted light emanating from glass particles. These measurements are repeated a plurality of times. The invention thus offers an improvement in sensitivity and reliability of a detecting method. An apparatus (,) comprises a carousel (,) with a plurality of cameras dedicated to a single bottle. A system is described to reduce costs by having eight cameras share one image processing unit.