Patent ID: 9365357
Filing Date: 2016-06-14
CPC Classification: B07C,B65G,G06K,G06M,G06T

Claim Text:
1. A postal sorting machine comprising a conveyor system having a conveyor adapted to move mailpieces along a certain conveyor path in a direction D along a plurality of sorting outlets of the postal sorting machine, at least one pass sensor designed to detect at least one of said mailpieces in motion on the conveyor going past at a certain point of the conveyor path and to respond to a detection of said mailpiece going past by delivering a pass detection signal to a monitoring and control unit via a field-bus, which monitoring and control unit responds to the pass detection signal by delivering a control signal for an electromechanical actuator of the conveyor via said field-bus, said postal sorting machine further comprising a movement tracking system suitable for generating digital images containing the mailpieces in motion on the conveyor, wherein said at least one pass sensor is a virtual sensor represented in a 3D digital model of the conveyor, and wherein it includes an emulator configured to transform said images generated by the movement tracking system into 3D-modeled mailpieces and to detect the 3D interactions between the 3D-modeled mailpieces and the virtual sensor represented in the 3D digital model of the conveyor, and on the basis of such detections, to generate said pass detection signals that are delivered to said monitoring and control unit via said field-bus.