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. 24, 2007
Filed:
Aug. 04, 2003
Masataka Takahashi, Chiba, JP;
Masataka Takahashi, Chiba, JP;
Laurel Precision Machines Co., Ltd., Osaka, JP;
Abstract
A coin discriminating method includes steps of irradiating a surface of a coin with light, photoelectrically detecting light reflected by the surface of the coin, producing detected pattern data of the surface of the coin, binarizing corresponding reference pattern data so that '1' is assigned to pixel data having a signal intensity level equal to or higher than a predetermined signal intensity level and '0' is assigned to pixel data having a signal intensity level lower than the predetermined signal intensity level to produce reference bright portion pattern data consisting of “1” pixel data and reference dark portion pattern data consisting of “0” pixel data, extracting bright portion pattern data consisting of pixels corresponding to pixels included in the reference bright portion pattern data and dark portion pattern data consisting of pixels corresponding to pixels included in the reference dark portion pattern data from the detected pattern data, and discriminating whether or not the surface of the coin is damaged to higher than the predetermined level by comparing the difference between the bright portion data signal intensity average value and dark portion data signal intensity average value with a threshold value of coins of a corresponding denomination.