Digital watermarking applications
AssigneeDigimarc Corporation
InventorSean Calhoon
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
In one aspect, assembly of multi-part food packaging is checked by reference to payloads of steganographically-encoded digital watermarks printed across the packaging components. Marking all surfaces of the packaging components allows arbitrary orientation of feed stock in assembly equipment, and wide latitude in placement of inspection cameras along the packaging line. In another aspect, a scanner at a retail checkout station is alert to any gap detected in steganographic encoding on retail product packaging and, if found, alerts an operator to possible presence of an adhesive label with a misleading barcode. A great variety of others features and arrangements are also detailed.
Claims9
A system comprising:
- a camera system disposed in a checkout area of a retail store;
- a processor, configured by software instructions stored in a memory, to perform actions including:
- processing image data, captured by the camera system from product packaging, to decode GTIN data encoded in a steganographic digital watermark on said product packaging;
- processing said image data to decode GTIN data encoded in a barcode on said product packaging;
- and
- comparing the GTIN data decoded from the steganographic digital watermark first machine-readable code with the GTIN data decoded from the barcode second machine-readable code to determine whether they correspond.
A non-transitory computer-readable medium containing software instructions for configuring a processor-based computer system to perform acts including:
- processing image data, captured by a camera system from product packaging, to decode GTIN data encoded in a steganographic digital watermark on said product packaging;
- processing said image data to decode GTIN data encoded in a barcode on said product packaging;
- and
- comparing the GTIN data decoded from the steganographic digital watermark with the GTIN data decoded from the barcode to determine whether they correspond.
A system comprising:
- a camera system disposed in a checkout area of a retail store to capture imagery of product packaging;
- a digital watermark decoder configured to decode GTIN data encoded in a steganographic digital watermark on said product packaging from said imagery;
- a barcode decoder configured to decode GTIN data encoded in a barcode on said product packaging from said imagery;
- and
- a processor, configured by software instructions stored in a memory, to compare the GTIN data decoded from the steganographic digital watermark with the GTIN data decoded from the barcode to determine whether they correspond.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.