Devices, systems, and methods for reading barcodes

• US 10,185,857 B2
• Filed: 07/06/2017
• Issued: 01/22/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 06/14/2017
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Canon Information and Imaging Solutions, Inc. (Canon Inc.), Canon USA, Inc. (Canon Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Canon Information and Imaging Solutions, Inc. (Canon Inc.), Canon USA, Inc. (Canon Inc.)
• Inventors: Gutfinger, Ron S., Chern, Wei-Jhy
• Primary Examiner(s): Trail, Allyson
• Application Number:
  US15/643,234
• Publication Number:
  US 20180365462A1
• Time in Patent Office: 565 Days
• Field of Search: 23546241, 23546208, 2354622, 235454, 235385
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 7/10722 Photodetector array or CCD scanning
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 7/1413 1D bar codes
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 7/1443 locating of the code in an image
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 7/1447 extracting optical codes from image or text carrying said optical code
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/10016 Video; Image sequence
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/11 Region-based segmentation

Abstract

Devices, systems, and methods obtain a sequence of images, track a label-candidate area in the sequence of images, and read a value of a barcode of interest in the label-candidate area in an image in the sequence of images.

Claims

1. A device comprising:

one or more computer-readable media; and

one or more processors that are coupled to the one or more computer-readable media and that are configured to cause the device to

obtain an image, which includes a plurality of pixels,

identify a label-candidate area in the image without identifying a barcode in the image, wherein the label-candidate area is smaller than the image,

determine if the label-candidate area satisfies a condition without determining whether other areas in the image satisfy the condition,

in response to determining that the label-candidate area does not satisfy the condition, inflate the label-candidate area, thereby generating an inflated label-candidate area,

obtain a higher-resolution version of the inflated label-candidate area,

and

determine if the higher-resolution version of the inflated label-candidate area satisfies the condition.

2. The device of claim 1, wherein the condition is that the label-candidate area includes a readable barcode.

3. The device of claim 1, wherein the condition is that the label-candidate area includes a readable barcode that encodes a tracking number.

4. The device of claim 1, wherein the higher-resolution version of the inflated label-candidate area includes pixels that surround the label-candidate area but that are not included in the label-candidate area.

5. The device of claim 1, wherein the inflated label-candidate area includes pixels that are within a predetermined number of pixels of the label-candidate area.

6. The device of claim 1, wherein, to identify the label-candidate area in the image, the one or more processors are further configured to cause the device to identify the label-candidate area in the image based on an aspect ratio of the label-candidate area.

7. The device of claim 1, wherein, to obtain the image, the one or more processors are further configured to cause the device to

generate the image from the higher-resolution version of the image.

8. The device of claim 1, wherein, to determine if the label-candidate area satisfies the condition without determining whether other areas in the image satisfy the condition, the one or more processors are further configured to cause the device to input only the label-candidate area to a barcode-reading function.

9. One or more computer-readable storage media storing instructions that, when executed by one or more computing devices, cause the one or more computing devices to perform operations comprising:

obtaining a sequence of images, all of which includes a same label-candidate area;

identifying the label-candidate area in the images in the sequence of images without identifying a barcode in the images in the sequence of images;

searching for a readable barcode of interest in the label-candidate area in an image in the sequence of images without searching for a readable barcode of interest in other areas in the image; and

in response to finding a readable barcode in the label-candidate area in the image, reading a value of the readable barcode of interest in the label-candidate area.

10. The one or more computer-readable storage media of claim 9,

wherein the operations further comprise discarding the images in the sequence of images that follow the image in which the value of the readable barcode of interest was read without searching for the readable barcode of interest in the images in the sequence of images that follow the image in which the value of the readable barcode of interest was read.

11. The one or more computer-readable storage media of claim 9, wherein identifying the label-candidate area is based on one or more of a shape of the label-candidate area, a size of the label-candidate area, a position of the label-candidate area, a color of the label-candidate area, and an orientation of the label-candidate area.

12. The one or more computer-readable storage media of claim 9, wherein identifying the label-candidate area is based on an aspect ratio of the label-candidate area.

13. The one or more computer-readable storage media of claim 9, wherein the operations further comprise:

creating a record for the label-candidate area; and

adding respective values of any read barcodes in the label-candidate area, including the barcode of interest, to the record for the label-candidate area.

14. A method comprising:

obtaining a captured image, which includes a plurality of pixels,

generating a lower-resolution version of the captured image,

identifying a label-candidate area in the lower-resolution version of the captured image, wherein the label-candidate area is smaller than the image,

determining that the label-candidate area in the lower-resolution version of the captured image does not satisfy a condition,

in response to determining that the label-candidate area in the lower-resolution version of the captured image does not satisfy the condition, identifying the label-candidate area in the captured image, and

determining that the label-candidate area in the captured image satisfies the condition.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the condition is that the label-candidate area includes a readable barcode.

16. The method of claim 15, further comprising:

in response to determining that the label-candidate area in the captured image includes a readable barcode, reading and storing a value of the readable barcode.

17. The method of claim 14, wherein determining that the label-candidate area in the lower-resolution version of the captured image does not satisfy the condition is performed without determining whether any areas in the lower-resolution version of the captured image other than the label-candidate area satisfy the condition.

18. The method of claim 14, wherein identifying the label-candidate area in the lower-resolution version of the captured image is performed without identifying a barcode in the lower-resolution version of the captured image.

19. The method of claim 14, wherein determining that the label-candidate area in the captured image satisfies the condition includes inputting only the label-candidate area to a barcode-reading function.