Patent ID: 9235764
Filing Date: 2016-01-12
CPC Classification: G06K

Claim Text:
1. A commodity recognition apparatus, comprising: an interface that accesses a recognition dictionary file which stores feature amount data representing surface information for each of a plurality of recognition target commodities obtained from reference images of each recognition target commodity captured from a proper distance; an image capturing section that captures an image of a commodity; a distance measurement unit that measures a distance from the image capturing section to the commodity captured by the image capturing section; and a processor, wherein the processor is configured to: extract an appearance feature amount of the commodity contained in the image captured by the image capturing section; calculate, for each recognition target commodity, a similarity degree representing how similar the appearance feature amount is to the feature amount data by comparing the appearance feature amount extracted by the feature amount extraction unit with the feature amount data of the recognition dictionary file; set recognition target commodities having the similarity degree greater than or equal to a first threshold as candidates of a recognized commodity; determine whether the distance measured by the distance measurement unit is a proper value; if the measured distance is not a proper value, select and output a first number of recognition target commodities in a descending order of the similarity degree from among the candidates of the recognized commodity; and if the measured distance is a proper value, select and output a second number of recognition target commodities in a descending order of the similarity degree from among the candidates of the recognized commodity, the second number being smaller than the first number.