Back to results
US 9,224,027 B2Granted
Hand-mounted indicia-reading device with finger motion triggering
AssigneeHand Held Products, Inc.
InventorsErik Van Horn, Stephen Colavito, Gregory Rueblinger, Gennady Germaine
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A wearable indicia reader is worn on the back of a user's hand such that the act of pointing the user's index finger is sufficient to align the indicia reader and trigger the indicia-reading process. Triggering is achieved by sensing the user's finger in an image or by breaking a light path in a photogate.
Claims18
An indicia-reading device, comprising:
- an indicia-capturing subsystem including a multi-element image sensor for capturing images of the indicia-capturing subsystem's field of view;
- an indicia-decoding subsystem configured for decoding indicia in the images captured by the indicia-capturing subsystem;
- a hand-mounted housing substantially enclosing the indicia-capturing subsystem and the indicia-decoding subsystem, wherein the hand-mounted housing comprises finger rings to attach to the user's middle and ring fingers so that, when a user makes a first and fully extends the user's index finger, the user's index finger and the indicia-capturing subsystem are pointed substantially in the same direction;
- and
- a non-mechanical trigger mechanism configured to initiate an indicia-reading sequence performed by the indicia-capturing subsystem and the indicia-decoding subsystem if the user's index finger is detected in the images captured by the indicia-capturing subsystem.
2 more elements
A method for reading indicia, comprising:
- providing an indicia-reading device that includes (i) an indicia-capturing subsystem for capturing images of the indicia-capturing subsystem's field of view, (ii) an indicia-decoding subsystem configured for decoding indicia information acquired by the indicia-capturing subsystem, and (iii) and a non-mechanical trigger mechanism for initiating an indicia-reading sequence via a trigger signal;
- capturing images of the indicia-capturing subsystem's field of view;
- generating a trigger signal if a user's finger is detected in the captured images;
- and
- decoding indicia information in the captured images in response to the generation of the trigger signal.
2 more elements
A non-mechanical triggering mechanism for a finger-mounted indicia-reading device, comprising:
- a multi-element image sensor for repeatedly capturing images of a field of view;
- and
- a processor communicatively coupled to the multi-element image sensor, the processor configured by software to:
- (i) receive each captured image from the multi-element image sensor,
- (ii) analyze each captured image for the presence of a finger, and
- (iii) generate, if a finger is present in one or more captured images, a trigger signal to initiate an indicia-reading sequence.
3 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.