Beverage preparation machine with capsule recognition
AssigneeSociete des Produits Nestle S.A.
InventorsBertrand Guyon, Michael Fournier
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A machine for preparing and dispensing a beverage has: a capsule extraction unit having a first part and a second part that are relatively movable between a distant position for inserting a capsule and a close position for extracting such capsule; a control unit for controlling the extraction unit to extract such capsule; an outlet for dispensing said beverage formed by extracting such capsule to a user-receptacle located in a receptacle placing area; and a capsule recognition arrangement connected to the control unit for recognizing the colour of at least part of a capsule inserted in the machine.
Claims15
1-12. (canceled)
A machine for preparing and dispensing a beverage, the machine comprising:
- an extraction unit for extracting a beverage ingredient capsule to form the beverage;
- a control unit for controlling the extraction unit to extract such capsule;
- an outlet for dispensing the beverage formed by extracting such capsule to a user-receptacle;
- a color recognition module for recognizing a color of a capsule inserted in the machine, the color recognition module comprising a color sensor for sensing a sample color of at least part of the capsule;
- the color recognition module is configured to compare the sample color to at least one reference color by:
- computing a color distance between a sample color vector of the sample color and a reference color vector of the at least one reference color,
- computing a chromaticity distance between a sample chromaticity vector of the sample color and a reference chromaticity vector of the at least one reference color,
- computing a score with the color distance and the chromaticity distance to determine a match between the color sample and the at least one reference color.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.