Patent ID: 9328953
Filing Date: 2016-05-03
CPC Classification: F25B,F25D,G01N

Claim Text:
1. A refrigerator, comprising: a compressor, a condenser, and an expansion unit; an evaporator for evaporating a refrigerant that has passed through the expansion unit; a heating unit for providing heat for defrosting the evaporator; a photographing device provided at one side of the evaporator and disposed to photograph the evaporator, so as to sense the amount of frost on the evaporator, the photographing device including a photographing unit for photographing frost on the evaporator and the surrounding background; and a control unit configured to determine the amount of frost on the evaporator from an image taken by the photographing device by acquiring pixel values which are proportionate to amount of frost on the evaporator by applying image processing which includes binarization that separates the frost from other acquired images to determine the amount of frost on the evaporator, the control unit further configured to control the heating unit to operate when the determined amount of frost exceeds a predetermined amount.