Electrical pulse counters – pulse dividers – or shift registers: c – Applications – Counting animate or inanimate entities
Reexamination Certificate
2000-03-31
2001-11-20
Wambach, Margaret R. (Department: 2816)
Electrical pulse counters, pulse dividers, or shift registers: c
Applications
Counting animate or inanimate entities
C377S006000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06320926
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a counter for counting falling tokens and a game machine provided with the counter and played with tokens.
2. Description of the Related Art
FIG. 1
shows a counter for counting tokens according to a prior art disclosed in, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 11-134468. The counter has a rotary disk
1
onto which tokens
3
are fed. The disk
1
feeds the tokens
3
into a discharge port
5
by centrifugal force. The tokens
3
at the discharge port
5
are aligned and transferred through a path
7
to a counting sensor
9
, which counts the number of the tokens
3
. This counter is installed in, for example, a slot machine, to correctly grasp a payout ratio, i.e., the ratio of tokens inserted by players into the slot machine to tokens awarded to players, so that the slot machine is properly controlled to promote wholesome playing without boring players or unnecessarily increasing a gambling aspect.
When applied to a pusher-type game machine, this may lose player's excitement and interest.
The pusher-type game machine has a table on which many tokens are present, and a slider that reciprocates behind the tokens on the table. A player inserts a token into the game machine, and the inserted token randomly falls on the table so that, due to the inserted token, the tokens on the table may be pushed forward by the slider and may fall from a front end of the table. The tokens fallen from the table gather at a return mouth. The player may enjoy the sound made by the falling tokens.
In the pusher-type game machine, the number of tokens to be returned to a player must be counted before the tokens reach the return mouth, and the counter mentioned above is incapable of achieving this.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
An object of the present invention is to provide a counter for counting the number of objects that randomly fall and a pusher-type game machine provided with the counter.
In order to accomplish the object, a first aspect of the present invention provides a counter having a capacitance sensor, a reference memory, and an operation unit. The capacitance sensor has a sensor unit arranged in a path where uniform objects fall, to detect a capacitance change in the path. The reference memory stores a reference capacitance change that occurs when a single object falls through the path. The operation unit compares a capacitance change detected by the capacitance sensor with the reference capacitance change and determines the number of objects falling through the path according to a result of the comparison.
According to a second aspect of the present invention, the operation unit compares a total capacitance change detected by the capacitance sensor with the reference capacitance change.
According to a third aspect of the present invention, the operation unit extracts singular points from a total capacitance change detected by the capacitance sensor, counts the number of the extracted singular points, compares the total capacitance change with the reference capacitance change, and determines the number of falling objects according to the counted number and a result of the comparison.
A fourth aspect of the present invention provides a counter having a capacitance sensor and an operation unit. The capacitance sensor has a sensor unit arranged in a path through which uniform objects fall, to detect a capacitance change in the path. The operation unit extracts singular points from the detected capacitance change, counts the number of the extracted singular points, and determines the number of the objects falling through the path according to the counted number.
According to a fifth aspect of the present invention, the sensor unit of the capacitance sensor consists of a long dielectric base having a specified dielectric constant and electrodes attached to the dielectric base along the length thereof.
According to a sixth aspect of the present invention, the path is defined along a token falling edge of a table in a game machine, and the sensor unit of the capacitance sensor is arranged at the token falling edge. In this case, the objects to be detected by the capacitance sensor are tokens, which are pushed and dropped from the token falling edge of the table, and the capacitance sensor detects a capacitance change in the path due to the falling tokens.
According to the first aspect, the capacitance sensor detects a capacitance change in the path when uniform objects fall through the path. The reference memory stores a reference capacitance change that occurs when a single object falls through the path. The operation unit compares a capacitance change detected by the capacitance sensor with the reference capacitance change and determines the number of objects falling through the path according to a result of the comparison. In this way, the counter of the first aspect is capable of counting uniform objects that fall in front of the capacitance sensor.
According to the second aspect, the operation unit compares a total capacitance change detected by the capacitance sensor with the reference capacitance change and finds a multiple of the reference capacitance change with respect to the total capacitance change, to more correctly count the number of falling objects.
According to the third aspect, the operation unit extracts singular points from a total capacitance change detected by the capacitance sensor, counts the number of the extracted singular points, compares the total capacitance change with the reference capacitance change, and more correctly determines the number of falling objects according to the counted number and a result of the comparison.
According to the fourth aspect, the operation unit extracts singular points from a capacitance change detected by the capacitance sensor, counts the number of the extracted singular points, and determines the number of falling objects according to the counted number.
According to the fifth aspect, the sensor unit of the capacitance sensor consists of a long dielectric base having a specified dielectric constant and electrodes attached to the base along the length thereof The sensor unit may be cut to a required length, to improve the versatility thereof.
According to the sixth aspect, the counter counts tokens that are pushed and randomly dropped from a token falling edge of a table in a pusher-type game machine. Since the counter is capable of counting falling tokens, the counter never spoils a player's paid-out feeling. The counter is capable of properly managing a payout ratio without boring players or unnecessarily increasing a gambling aspect.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5530730 (1996-06-01), Takemoto et al.
patent: 11-134468 (1999-05-01), None
Pratt, Esq. John S.
Stockton LLP Kilpatrick
Unirec Co., Ltd.
Wambach Margaret R.
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