METHOD FOR LOCATING THE POSITION AND ORIENTATION OF A FIDUCIARY MARK

摘要

Fiduciary mark detection system 10 usable with an over-the-belt optical character recognition (OCR) reader for ascertaining the position and orientation of text 59 within the destination address on a parcel 30 moving along a conveyor 20. The fiduciary mark detection system 10 includes a charged coupled device (CCD) array 60, an analog-to-digital (A/D) converter 70, a general purpose computer 80, and a software program 100. The image processing software program 100 comprises projection histograms, convolution filtering, correlation, radial variance, first moments of inertia, edge image analysis, Hough method, and detection confidence testing. An orientation defining mark 50 comprises fluorescent ink is placed approximately in the center of the destination address block on a parcel 30. The orientation defining mark 50 is non obstructive of the underlying text 59 and may be affixed to the parcel 30 at any time prior to scanning. The fiduciary mark comprises two circles, 110 and 120, of different diameter oriented such that a vector 150 from the center 130 of the large circle 110 to the center 140 of the small circle 120 is oriented in the same direction as underlying text 59.