Granted Patent B2

US 7,191,895 · App. 10/958,955 · Granted Mar 20, 2007

Abstract

Claims (19)

1. A conveyor system, comprising:

a conveying surface for conveying a series of articles;

at least one sensor for sensing the articles on said conveying surface;

a control responsive to said at least one sensor, said control establishing at least one parameter of individual articles and controlling said conveying surface as a function of said at least one parameter of the articles;

said control comprising a computer and a program for said computer, said program defining at least one probability estimator, wherein said control is adapted to assign said at least one probability estimator to an individual article, wherein said control is adapted to estimate said at least one parameter of that individual article at least in part by said at least one probability estimator.

2. The conveyor system of claim 1 wherein said at least one probability estimator comprises a Bayesian estimator.

3. The conveyor system of claim 2 wherein said Bayesian estimator comprises a Kalman filter.

4. The conveyor system of claim 1 wherein said at least one parameter comprises at least one chosen from article position and article velocity.

5. The conveyor system of claim 1 wherein said at least one parameter comprises a plurality of parameters, said parameters comprising article position, article length and article velocity.

6. The conveyor system of claim 1 wherein said at least one sensor comprises at least one scanning image sensor.

7. The conveyor system of claim 6 including another probability estimator applied to an output of said at least one scanning image sensor.

8. The conveyor system of claim 7 wherein said another probability estimator compares sensed leading edges and trailing edges of articles to identify at least one chosen from phantom articles and phantom gaps between articles.

9. The conveyor system of claim 7 wherein said another probability estimator includes decision logic.

10. The conveyor system of claim 6 wherein said at least one scanning image sensor comprises at least one chosen from a linear photo sensor array, a line scan camera and a radar sensor.

11. The conveyor system of claim 1 wherein said conveying surface is made up of a plurality of tandem conveying surface portions, a speed of each conveying surface portion being individually controllable and wherein said control defining a plurality of feedback-gapping algorithms, each of said feedback-gapping algorithms between adjacent conveying surface portions for adjusting relative speeds of those adjacent conveying surface portions as a function of the at least one parameter of the articles.

12. The conveyor system of claim 11 wherein said feedback-gapping algorithms operate on outputs of said at least one probability estimator assigned to that individual article.

13. The conveyor system of claim 12 wherein said control adjusts relative positions of articles with said feedback-gapping algorithms beginning with a pair of adjacent conveying surface portions and cascading to adjacent pairs of adjacent conveying surface portions.

14. The conveyor system of claim 13 wherein said control adjusts relative positions of articles beginning with a downstream pair of adjacent conveying surface portions that are downstream relative to article movement and cascading upstream relative to article movement through adjacent pairs of adjacent conveying surface portions.

15. The conveying system of claim 14 including a feedback gapping algorithm between one of said downstream adjacent conveying surface portions and a fixed speed conveying surface portion that is downstream of said downstream adjacent convoying surface portions.

Assignments (9)