Patent ID: 6155487
Filing Date: 2000-12-05
Classification: G06K

Abstract:
A shelf labelling system comprising:an elongate label carrier for mounting along a front edge of a shelf and comprising means locating a labelling strip extending continuously therealong and a linear guideway extending continuously along the label carrier adjacent the label locating means;the labelling strip having a longitudinally continuous display region of non-volatile, unformatted, material, which is erasable and re-writable with humanly legible characters;one of the labelling strip and the label carrier being marked with an indexing track formed by a longitudinally continuous, permanent, coded pattern of machine readable indicia extending alongside the display region;a carriage comprising an erasing and writing head and indexing track detecting means; and,means mounting the carriage for continuous linear movement along the label carrier in guided engagement with the guideway so that the erasing and writing head and the indexing track are in registration with the display region and the indexing track detecting means, respectively, to erase and write pixels forming humanly legible characters at preselected longitudinal positions on the display region determined by indicia of the indexing track detected by the detecting means, so that humanly legible characters associated with items on the shelf are displayed on the labelling strip at longitudinal positions adjacent those items.