Tagged surface printer

• US 20050061882A1
• Filed: 11/08/2004
• Published: 03/24/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 06/30/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Silverbrook Research Pty Limited
• Original Assignee: Silverbrook Research Pty Limited
• Inventors: Lapstun, Paul, Walmsley, Simon Robert
• Granted Patent: US 7,073,724 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 235/432
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 1/121 by printing code marks applying code marks to labels B65C9/46; marking or coding completed packages B65B61/26
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 19/06 characterised by the kind of the digital marking, e.g. shape, nature, code
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 19/06037 multi-dimensional coding
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 19/06168 the marking being a concentric barcode
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 2019/06262 with target- or other orientation-indicating feature
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 7/1417 2D bar codes
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 7/1421 Circular bar codes
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 7/1443 locating of the code in an image
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 7/1456 determining the orientation of the optical code with respect to the reader and correcting therefore

Abstract

A printer for generating a surface printed with tags, the tags embedded with data, the printer comprising: an encoder having two or more rendering engines, the encoder rendering a pattern of tags, each tag having a data area comprising data dots and a locator component comprising constant dots; the tag encoder obtaining tag data from a tag format structure, the tag format structure being a dot based data package template containing a plurality of entries, there being an entry associated with each dot'"'"'s position, an entry indicating whether a data dot or a constant dot, accordingly each entry having either fixed data bits or variable data bits, each entry being interpreted independently without reliance on state information; at least one printhead for printing said pattern of tags.

Claims

1. A printer for generating a surface printed with tags, the tags embedded with data, the printer comprising:

an encoder having two or more rendering engines, the encoder rendering a pattern of tags, each tag having a data area comprising data dots and a locator component comprising constant dots;

the tag encoder obtaining tag data from a tag format structure, the tag format structure being a dot based data package template containing a plurality of entries, there being an entry associated with each dot'"'"'s position, an entry indicating whether a data dot or a constant dot, accordingly each entry having either fixed data bits or variable data bits, each entry being interpreted independently without reliance on state information;

at least one printhead for printing said pattern of tags.

2. The printer of claim 1, further including:

a first rendering engine for processing one part of the surface and a second engine for processing a different part of the surface.

3. The printer of claim 1, further including:

a first rendering engine for processing one part of a tag and a second engine for processing a different part of the same tag.

4. The printer of claim 1, wherein:

each entry of the tag format structure comprises bits including a selected bit and the entry is interpreted as indicating a data bit, or not, according to the selected bit.

5. The printer of claim 4, wherein:

if the selected bit indicates that the entry is data, the remainder of the entry is interpreted as an address.

6. The printer of claim 1, wherein the tag format structure is comprised of one or more lines;

the printer further including;

means scaling the tag by a factor of N, by scaling the number of entries in the tag format structure; and

means scaling the tag format structure by replication of each entry N times and by replication of each line N times.

7. The printer of claim 1, further comprising:

means providing a tag format structure in which dot positions have a relationship and the relationship takes into account a redundancy encoding of the data.

8. The printer of claim 1, wherein:

the tag encoder is used to redundantly encode the data bits.

9. The printer of claim 1, wherein:

the printhead prints the dots as continuous tone dots.