Patent ID: 8459557
Filing Date: 2013-06-11
Classification: G06K

Abstract:
1. A laser scanning code symbol reading system for reading code symbols comprising: a housing with a light transmission window; a laser scanning module, disposed in said housing, for scanning a laser beam across a laser scanning field having a near portion and a far portion defined external to said light transmission window, wherein said laser scanning module is responsive to one or more control signals generated by a system controller and comprises: (i) a laser drive module for driving a near-field laser source to produce a near-field laser beam focused within the near portion of said laser scanning field in response to receiving said one or more control signals from said system controller, and for driving a far-field laser source to produce a far-field laser beam in response to receiving said one or more control signals from said system controller, and (ii) a laser scanning mechanism for scanning said near-field laser beam across said laser scanning field, and a code symbol on an object in said laser scanning field, or scanning said far-field laser beam across said laser scanning field and a code symbol on an object in said laser scanning field; an automatic object detector disposed in said housing for automatically detecting when said object is present in only the near portion of said laser scanning field, and only generating an object detection event when said object is present in the near portion of said laser scanning field, said automatic object detector being the only object detector in the laser scanning code symbol reading system; light collection optics, disposed in said housing, for collecting light reflected/scattered from scanned object in said laser scanning field; a photo-detector, disposed in said housing, for detecting the intensity of collected light from said code symbols, and generating an analog scan data signal corresponding to said detected light intensity during laser scanning operations; an analog scan data signal processor, disposed in said housing, for processing said analog scan data signals and converting the processed analog scan data signals into digitized data signals; a programmed decode processor, disposed in said housing, for decode processing said digitized data signals, and generating symbol character data representative of each code symbol scanned by said near-field or far-field laser beam; and an input/output (I/O) communication interface, disposed in said housing, for interfacing with a host system and transmitting symbol character data to said host system, via a communication link, supported by said laser scanning code symbol reading system and said host system; said system controller, responsive to the generation of said object detection event, for controlling operations within said laser scanning bar code symbol reading system; wherein when said system controller detects the generation of said object detection event, said system controller generates said one or more control signals causing said near-field laser source to generate said near-field laser beam and said laser scanning mechanism scans said near-field laser beam across a code symbol on an object in said laser scanning field during laser scanning operations, so as to generate an analog scan data signal which is processed and converted into a digitized data signal, which is then decoded processed in effort to read said code symbol on said object.