Patent ID: 6944324

Claim:
A system for detecting the presence of overlapped objects on a conveyor belt conveying a plurality of objects, said system comprising: at least one machine vision system including first and second machine vision cameras, first and second illumination sources, and at least one machine vision computer; said first and second illumination sources configured to illuminate said plurality of objects as said objects are conveyed past a field of view at an inspection station along said conveyor belt, wherein said first illumination source illuminates said objects in a vertical direction and said second illumination source illuminates said objects in a horizontal direction, and wherein said first illumination source includes a lighting system configured to make said objects appear light against a substantially dark background, and said second illuminating source includes a lighting system configured to make a background light against said objects; said first and second machine vision cameras positioned to capture images of said plurality of objects as said objects are conveyed past said field of view, and wherein said first machine vision camera is oriented to capture a first image of said objects in said field of view in the vertical direction, and said second machine vision camera oriented to capture a second image of said objects in said field of view in the horizontal direction; said at least one machine vision computer programmed to detect the presence of multiple object conditions by detecting and counting a number of edges appearing in an image captured by said first or second machine vision camera; and said at least one machine vision computer, for performing edge blob sortation on the image captured by said first or second machine vision camera.