Patent ID: 8035052

Claim:
A method for grouping individual products into lots at an end of an industrial production line along which the individual products travel on a conveyor belt through a viewing zone of a visiometry station, the method comprising: acquiring images from a line of light projected onto the viewing zone by a lamellar laser beam by means of a camera observing the line of light at a non-zero angle so as to detect an image of the line of light as deformed by a presence of products on the conveyor belt; and determining, by automatically processing height information on the products thus acquired according to the products' location on the conveyor belt, surface areas on which the height information is greater than a given maximum threshold, which corresponds to at least two products are overlapping, and taking the surface areas into account when calculating a number of products that have crossed the viewing zone in order to automatically command sorting elements of a station that groups the products into lots containing the products in predetermined quantities.