Locating items with flickering lamps
First Claim
1. A process of locating an item belonging to a collection of items in diverse places, the item having an individual identity within the collection, belonging to a group within the collection, or having an individual identity within the collection and also belonging to a group within the collection;
- the process comprising steps of;
attaching to each item in the collection a respective lamp emitting optical flickers that encode a group/identity of that item;
providing a detector defining a detection location, wherein information relating to the group/identity of the item to be located has been input to the detector;
moving the detector relative to the collection of items; and
registering the item to be located, according to the information input to the detector, when the item to be located flickers within the detection location.
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Accused Products
Abstract
Items, including lost items or items out of place, can be located by attaching flickering LED'"'"'s to them and moving about with a detector that registers the presence of the desired item or items by decoding the flickers. The flickers can substitute for, or augment, ordinary printed bar codes, and can use the same encoding so that the temporal pattern of flickering corresponds to the spatial pattern of black and white stripes in the printed bar code. The flickering items can be registered from a distance and from among a large group of other flickering items.
42 Citations
15 Claims
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1. A process of locating an item belonging to a collection of items in diverse places, the item having an individual identity within the collection, belonging to a group within the collection, or having an individual identity within the collection and also belonging to a group within the collection;
- the process comprising steps of;
attaching to each item in the collection a respective lamp emitting optical flickers that encode a group/identity of that item; providing a detector defining a detection location, wherein information relating to the group/identity of the item to be located has been input to the detector; moving the detector relative to the collection of items; and registering the item to be located, according to the information input to the detector, when the item to be located flickers within the detection location. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
- the process comprising steps of;
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10. A system to identify or locate an item belonging to a distinct subset of a collection of items;
- the system comprising;
a respective flickering lamp, attached to each item in the collection to emit light in a temporal pattern, the pattern including at least a portion special to a respective subset of each item; a memory attached to each respective item and coupled to the lamp to encode the pattern of each respective item; a light sensor registering light over an angle of detection, the sensor inputting light from the flickering lamp and outputting a raw signal; and a digital processor coupled to the light sensor, inputting the raw signal and outputting an identification of the distinct subset upon detection of the portion special to the distinct subset of the item to be identified or located; wherein information relating to the distinct subset of the item to be identified or located has been input to digital processor. - View Dependent Claims (11, 12, 13, 14, 15)
- the system comprising;
Specification