Automatic System and Method for Tracking and Decoding Barcode by Means of Portable Devices having Digital Cameras

• US 20120173347A1
• Filed: 12/30/2010
• Published: 07/05/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 12/30/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Samsung Eletrônica da Amazônia Ltda (Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Samsung Eletrônica da Amazônia Ltda (Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.)
• Inventors: DE ALMEIDA NEVES, Gustavo, FONSECA SANTOS, Eduardo Telmo, DE FREITAS JORGE, Eduardo Manuel, De Azevedo Filho, Alberto Almeida
• Granted Patent: US 9,224,026 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/16
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 7/10722 Photodetector array or CCD scanning
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 7/10861 sensing of data fields affixed to objects or articles, e.g. coded labels postal sorting B07C3/14, conveying articles B65G47/48

Abstract

The present invention patent application refers to a system and method for automatic tracking and decoding barcode image on the standard EAN-13 through portable devices equipped with digital cameras.

Through this system it is possible to track the barcode in any position and orientation it is in and decode it automatically in real time. To make the tracking and decoding of barcodes, methods are applied on the captured image, seeking the guidance and location of the barcode.

Claims

1. System for tracking and decoding barcode using portable devices equipped with digital cameras characterized in that it comprises:

At least a central processing unit (310) which is responsible for performing the necessary instructions for managing the camera, and make the computations for processing the image with the barcode;

A camera (311) capturing images and having a sufficient focus for the captured image to be maintained clear;

Storage medium (312) for storing information and data, including codes decoded;

Information input devices (313);

Audio Components (314);

Connectivity component (315) for communication between the application and a remote database that has information about the products;

display means (316) to view the pictures captured by the camera device, and when the barcode (110) is framed by the camera device, the system starts the location and decoding operations that will process the pictures obtained by the camera under execution, and then run the necessary procedures to determine the orientation and the boundaries of the barcode, and also made corrections related to lighting, signal/noise ratio, and thus the barcode is decoded.

2. System for tracking and decoding barcode using portable devices equipped with digital cameras, as in claim 1, wherein, after system startup, the digital camera device (111) is triggered and the preview mode will start showing the frames filmed in the display device (111), and at this time, the filmed frames are captured in real time at a rate of FPS frames per second.

3. System for tracking and decoding barcode using portable devices equipped with digital cameras, as in claim 2, wherein the typical value is 30 FPS.

4. System for tracking and decoding barcode using portable devices equipped with digital cameras, as in claim 2, wherein it provides a system for decoding barcode, for the purpose of equipment similar to that found in shops and supermarkets.

5. Automatic method for tracking and decoding barcode using portable devices equipped with digital cameras characterized in comprising the following steps:

Initializing the barcode reader (410);

intercepting the captured frames in the preview mode of the camera (411);

Searching probable orientation of the barcode (412);

Correcting rotation of the barcode (413);

searching the boundaries of the barcode (414);

Confirming the presence of the barcode (415);

Decoding the barcode (416), and

Displaying the result of decoding (417).

6. Automatic method for tracking and decoding barcode using portable devices equipped with digital cameras, as in claim 5, wherein the step of initializing the barcode reader (410) comprises driving and setting up the digital camera integrated with the portable device (111), presenting the user interface and preparing the required parameters for running the barcode reader.

8. Automatic method for tracking and decoding barcode using portable devices equipped with digital cameras, as in claim 6, wherein the macro is used to the auto focus focuses images close to the camera lens, allowing images that are close to be clearer and the decoding of smaller barcodes.

9. Automatic method for tracking and decoding barcode using portable devices equipped with digital cameras, as in claim 5, wherein during the step of intercepting the captured frames in the preview mode of the camera (411), the camera continues filming and displaying the new frame while another frame is processed in another thread.

10. Automatic method for tracking and decoding barcode using portable devices equipped with digital cameras, as in claim 5, wherein the operations performed in the code reading use only the luminance image.

11. Automatic method for tracking and decoding barcode using portable devices equipped with digital cameras, as in claim 5, wherein the stage of searching probable orientation of the barcode (412) computes the angle rotation of the direction in which the barcode is, and the frame that contains the barcode is divided into smaller regions with same size and for each of these regions an angle is computed.

12. Automatic method for tracking and decoding barcode using portable devices equipped with digital cameras, as in claim 5, wherein, to estimate the angle of barcode, the gray levels located in different orientations of scanning lines are obtained by traversing the barcode, and the pixels obtained from the lines with slopes between 0°

to 180°

, with the center of the scan lines intersecting the center of the region.

13. Automatic method for tracking and decoding barcode using portable devices equipped with digital cameras, as in claim 5, wherein the orientation of the barcode is the angle of the scan line between 0°

and 180°

that has the lower variance in the tones of intercepted gray pixels (712).

14. Automatic method for tracking and decoding barcode using portable devices equipped with digital cameras, as in claim 5, wherein the orientation belonging to the barcode is obtained by calculating the level of variation in gray levels of the line perpendicular to the orientation computed in each region, and the orientation of the barcode corresponds to the orientation computed for the region with the greatest variation between the levels of gray.

15. Automatic method for tracking and decoding barcode using portable devices equipped with digital cameras, as in claim 5, wherein the step of correcting the rotation of the barcode (413) is used to decode barcode too tilted, being performed only if the rotation angle of the barcode is less than 80°

and greater than 100°

.

16. Automatic method for tracking and decoding barcode using portable devices equipped with digital cameras, as in claim 5, wherein the step of correcting the rotation of the barcode (413) scans all lines perpendicular to the orientation of the barcode, creating a new image stacking these lines.

17. Automatic method for tracking and decoding barcode using portable devices equipped with digital cameras, as in claim 5, wherein the step of searching for the boundaries of the barcode (414) which calculates the position in which the barcode begins and the position in which it ends, both horizontally and vertically.

19. Automatic method for tracking and decoding barcode using portable devices equipped with digital cameras, as in claim 5, wherein the step of confirming the presence of the barcode (415) analyzes whether within the selected region actually there is a barcode, checking the level of abrupt variation of shades of gray within the boundaries computed for the barcode, being selected a horizontal line in the middle of the region corresponding to the barcode and if the level of variation in tone gray of the line is less than the threshold, then the image under analysis is ignored and the process is restarted, otherwise the next step is executed, as it was confirmed the presence of a barcode.

20. Automatic method for tracking and decoding barcode using portable devices equipped with digital cameras, as in claim 5, wherein the step of decoding the barcode (416) corresponds to the core of the decoding and is used for reading the barcode, comprising the following sub-steps:

Horizontal slicing the barcode (1310), in which the image is sliced horizontally and each of these slices is processed individually, where, if the present slice (1311) succeeds in decoding, the process is completed and the result of decoding is returned;

Binarization of the horizontal slice (1312) which is responsible for converting the image values, which are generally found with 255 different gray levels in only two distinct tones;

black and white, being the threshold that separates whites from blacks defined from the division of the horizontal slice and vertical slices and calculating the threshold tone for the vertical slice which is obtained by averaging the gray scale of each vertical slice, and if the value of the pixel tone is less than this threshold, then black is attributed, otherwise white is attributed;

Vertical stacking of the binarized slice (1313), in which the two-dimensional slice is converted to a one-dimensional vector, this process is done through the vertical stacking of the binarized slice, which takes the average grayscale of each column and the average is greater than 127, then, the value is set to white but is black;

Conversion of pixels for bars (1314) that has as input the vector returned by the previous step that has the information of the bars in pixels, converting it to a vector representation of the barcode, and

Translation of the barcode (1315), which performs the translation of the barcode.

21. Automatic method for tracking and decoding barcode using portable devices equipped with digital cameras, as in claim 5, wherein the step of displaying the result of decoding (417) presents the result of bar code reading only in cases in which the decoding was successful.

22. Automatic method for tracking and decoding barcode using portable devices equipped with digital cameras, as in the previous claim, wherein from the results of the barcode, it is carried out a survey on the points of sales providing the product identified by the decoded barcode and the price of this product.

7. Automatic method for tracking and decoding barcode using portable devices equipped with digital cameras, according to previous claim, wherein the best resolution of the preview mode supported by the equipment is selected.

18. Automatic method for tracking and decoding barcode using portable devices equipped with digital cameras, according to previous claim, wherein to find the top and bottom of the barcode, it is calculates the horizontal difference of each image line (1110), the top of the barcode being the first line with a variation between the gray levels greater than the threshold and the base of the barcode is the last line greater than this threshold, to seek the left and the right side of the barcode is done the vertical stacking of the region between the top and bottom 1112, and the left side of the barcode to the first column and the right side, the last column with values greater than the established threshold (1113), the coordinates were obtained with the boundaries of the barcode delimited by the coordinates (1114), so that the elements that are not present in the barcode are not computed.