Patent ID: 7958624

Claim:
An apparatus for pallet inspection and repair comprising: an inspection station comprising at least one laser and at least one camera to collect light from the at least one laser after being reflected from a pallet comprising a number of elements to be inspected; a computer configured to run analysis software that analyses the reflected light, the analysis software configured to perform steps comprising receiving from the at least one camera a stream of three-dimensional points, each point having an x-, a y-, and a z-coordinate, filtering the stream of three-dimensional points to obtain a top surface geometry and topography by discarding points having a z-coordinate below a threshold, locating four corner points from the stream of three-dimensional points, the corner points having coordinates of (minimum x, minimum y), (minimum x, maximum y), (maximum x, minimum y), and (maximum x, maximum), identifying edges of each element based on the four corner points, thereby identifying a type and number of each element, determining a pallet design from the type and number of each element, loading a set of criteria from a database based on the pallet design, comparing each element of the pallet to the set of criteria to construct a list of repairs, and creating a repair recipe from the list of repairs; and an automated repair station configured to repair the pallet based on the repair recipe.