公开(公告)号：US06798896B2

公开(公告)日：2004-09-28

申请号：US09792192

申请日：2001-02-22

申请人： Mitsuru Watanabe ,  Satoshi Shingu ,  Masato Iwakawa

发明人： Mitsuru Watanabe ,  Satoshi Shingu ,  Masato Iwakawa

IPC分类号： G06K900

CPC分类号： G06K9/2018

摘要： The present invention enables to increase the speed of recognizing characters on an undefined-size postal matter such as a flat mail. The flat mail often has an address area different in color or pattern from the flat mail itself. The present invention provides an image input apparatus including pickup means of monochromatic-mode CCD 31 having a fine resolution capable of recognizing characters and pickup means of color-mode CCD 30 having a rough resolution only sufficient for detecting an address area. These pickup means are mounted in a unitary block so that images are taken in from approximately identical positions and a color image is used to detect an address area and a monochromatic image is used to recognize characters, thereby significantly increasing the speed of flat mail classification. An illumination unit 44 is forcibly cooled so as to enable to use a large-output lamp tube 75 capable of illuminating a wide range to assure the character recognition.

摘要翻译： 本发明能够增加在诸如平邮的未定义大小的邮政物上识别字符的速度。 扁平邮件通常具有与平面邮件本身不同的地址区域的颜色或图案。 本发明提供一种图像输入装置，其包括具有能够识别具有粗略分辨率的字符和拾取装置的精细分辨率的单色模式CCD 31的拾取装置，其具有足以检测地址区域的粗略分辨率。 这些拾取装置安装在一个整体的块中，以便从大致相同的位置拍摄图像，并且使用彩色图像来检测地址区域，并且使用单色图像来识别字符，从而显着提高平邮邮件分类的速度。 照明单元44被强制冷却，以便能够使用能够照亮宽范围的大输出灯管75，以确保字符识别。