Patent ID: 8781159

Claim:
An image acquisition and processing configuration to estimate the dimensions of a package, said configuration comprising: a primary image acquisition unit positioned at a primary acquisition location; a secondary image acquisition unit positioned at a secondary acquisition location which is offset from said primary acquisition location by a defined offset distance; a platform having a substantially horizontal top surface positioned substantially directly beneath said primary image acquisition unit such that said primary image acquisition unit is at a defined image acquisition height above said top surface of said platform; a fiducial marker positioned on said top surface of said platform; and a vision engine operatively connected to said image acquisition units and configured for: triggering said image acquisition units to acquire at least background images of said top surface of said platform and package images of a top surface of a package placed on said top surface of said platform, wherein at least one of said images is acquired using said primary image acquisition unit and contains an imaged representation of said fiducial marker, and wherein at least one other of said images is acquired using said secondary image acquisition unit and contains an imaged representation of said fiducial marker, receiving said acquired images from said image acquisition units, processing two of said received images, each of said two images having therein an imaged representation of said fiducial marker, to determine a fiducial image shift accounting for spatial drift of said image acquisition and processing configuration, and processing said received images using said fiducial image shift to estimate at least a height dimension of said package.