Classifying – separating – and assorting solids – Sorting special items – and certain methods and apparatus for... – Condition responsive means controls separating means
Patent
1993-09-24
1994-05-17
Dayoan, D. Glenn
Classifying, separating, and assorting solids
Sorting special items, and certain methods and apparatus for...
Condition responsive means controls separating means
209587, 209939, 382 8, 382 48, 235470, 348 91, B07C 500
Patent
active
053119991
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a method and to an apparatus for distributing packages or the like according to characters applied to their surfaces.
Already known from DE-AS [German Published Patent Application] 2,055,837 is a sorting system for postal packages and the like, the system including an intake conveyor and a sorting station. To sort and distribute the postal packages according to different address informations, this publication provides that the packages are supplied in random order to the sorting station, are there visually checked by operators and are distributed in a suitable manner depending on the result of the check, that is, they are transferred to the appropriate transporting devices. The performance of the visual check in this prior art sorting system requires the respective package to be manually turned and flipped over until the surface bearing the applied address has been located. For further distribution, the operators must then read the address and the postal code or delivery zone, respectively, must be determined for each package.
The drawbacks of such a sorting system are, in particular, the fact that, on the average, the packages must be manually flipped over and turned repeatedly in a time consuming manner until the address can be read and the obtained address information must be processed further in a complicated manner. The drawback of a system employing automatic flipping and turning of the packages for positioning the address is the high structural and control expenditures required for this purpose.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is an object of the present invention to improve the prior art and, in particular, to provide a method and an apparatus for distributing packages or the like in which the address information is obtained substantially automatically and there is only little positioning or movement of the packages during the obtaining of the address information, while further processing of the obtained address information is easier.
This is accomplished according to the invention, according to which, briefly stated, the method of distributing multisurface packages according to an address applied to a package surface includes the following steps: individually conveying the packages in a transporting direction along a conveying path and optically scanning each surface of each package, including an optical scanning of an underside of each package through a gap in the conveying path. The scanning step includes rough-scanning at least some of the package surfaces. Thereafter, at least approximately simultaneously, an image of all package surfaces of each package is obtained and for each package, a package surface based on all surface images is selected, and the selected package surface is fine-scanned. Then an at least partial image of the selected surface is obtained and to the image of the selected package surface there is assigned a sorting information for distributing the package corresponding to the image. The invention is here based on the concept that, after separation and alignment of the packages so that one edge is oriented in a defined manner relative to the transporting direction, positioning or movement of the packages in order to obtain the address information is not necessary if all surface portions of every package are scanned optically and images of all six surface portions are obtained. If the image of one surface portion includes a region containing address information (e.g., a sticker) this surface is evaluated further. This can be accomplished in that an image of greater resolution is obtained of the respective partial region of the surface in question (pickup field) and is fed to an automatic character recognition device and/or a video coding device or--if the resolution of the mentioned image is high enough--this image is fed to the above-mentioned devices. For further distribution and sorting, the detected addresses are assigned a distribution code, e.g. a postal code, which controls the subsequent distribution of the
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Gitschier Hubert
Glade Albert
Malow Siegmar
Pausinger Michael
Dayoan D. Glenn
Licentia Patent-Verwaltungs-GmbH
Nguyen Tuan
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