TRIGGERING A RADIO FREQUENCY IDENTIFICATION SCAN USING IMAGE RECOGNITION

• US 20110267172A1
• Filed: 04/30/2010
• Published: 11/03/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 04/30/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Symbol Technologies, LLC (Zebra Technologies Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Symbol Technologies, Inc. (Zebra Technologies Corporation)
• Inventors: Riechel, Patrick S.
• Granted Patent: US 8,350,675 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 340/10.1
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 17/0022 arrangements or provisious for transferring data to distant stations, e.g. from a sensing device "transfer between computer elements G06F13/00 "; data-transmission H04L
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 7/0004 Hybrid readers
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0833 Tracking

Abstract

A system and method for triggering a radio frequency identification, RFID, scan using image recognition includes; storing (300) image attributes of inventoried RFID-tagged items in a database along with information associated with the RFID-tagged items, capturing (302) an image of an item from an imaging device, determining (304) if there is a match between attributes of the captured image compared with the stored image attributes in the database indicating that the item is RFID-tagged, and upon a match determination (304) attempting to read (306) an RFID tag of the item.

Claims

1. A method for triggering a radio frequency identification (RFID) scan using image recognition, the method comprising:

storing (300) image attributes of inventoried RFID-tagged items in a database along with information associated with the RFID-tagged items;

capturing (302) an image of an item from an imaging device;

determining (304) if there is a match between attributes of the captured image compared with the stored image attributes in the database indicating that the item is RFID-tagged; and

upon a match determination (304), attempting to read (306) an RFID tag of the item.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein if the attempt to read (306) the RFID tag of the item is successful (308), further comprising automatically registering (310) information associated with the item from the database.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein if the attempt to read (306) the RFID tag of the item is unsuccessful (308), further comprising prompting a user for registering (312) information about the item.

4. The method of claim 1, if there is no match determination, further comprising manually registering (312) information about the item.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the attributes include actual images, and wherein determining (304) a match includes analyzing the images using an image recognition technique.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein determining (304) a match includes determining that a number of matched attributes exceeds a predetermined threshold.

7. A method for triggering a radio frequency identification (RFID) scan using image recognition, the method comprising:

storing (300) image attributes of inventoried RFID-tagged items in a database along with information associated with the RFID-tagged items;

capturing (302) an image of an item from an imaging device;

determining (304) if there is a match between attributes of the captured image compared with the stored image attributes in the database indicating that the item is RFID-tagged; and

if there is a match determination (304), attempting to read (306) an RFID tag of the item, wherein if the attempt to read is successful (308), automatically registering (310) information associated with the item from the database, and

if there is no match determination (304), manually registering (312) information about the item.

8. A system for triggering a radio frequency identification (RFID) scan using image recognition, the system comprising:

a database (106) operable to store image attributes of inventoried RFID-tagged items (100) along with information associated with the RFID-tagged items (100);

an imaging device (102) operable to capture an image of an item (100);

a processor (104) coupled to the imaging device (102), the processor (104) operable to determine if there is a match between attributes of the captured image compared with the stored image attributes in the database (106) indicating that the item (100) is RFID-tagged; and

a RFID scanner (108) coupled to the processor (104), wherein upon a match determination by the processor (104), the processor directs the RFID scanner (108) to attempt to read (112) an RFID tag (110) of the item (100).

9. The system of claim 8, wherein if the attempt to read (112) the RFID tag (110) of the item is successful, the RFID scanner (108) will supply an identifier of the item (100) from the RFID tag (110) to the processor (104), which will automatically register information associated with the item (100) from the database (106).

10. The system of claim 8, wherein if the attempt to read (112) the RFID tag (110) of the item is unsuccessful, the RFID scanner (108) will supply an unsuccessful indication to the processor (104), which can prompt a user to enter information about the item (100).

11. The system of claim 8, wherein the imaging device (102) is a camera.

12. The system of claim 8, wherein the attributes include actual images, and wherein the processor (104) determines if there is a match by analyzing the images using an image recognition technique.

13. The system of claim 8, wherein the RFID scanner (100) and imaging device (102) are co-located.