Patent ID: 8157170

Claim:
A card identification device that identifies a type of a card having a plurality of slits, one of the plurality of slits being a reference slit having a predetermined asymmetric shape, each of the others of the plurality of slits being a value slit whose position and length are determined such that the slit is included in an unshared one of a plurality of longest slit regions whose relative position with respect to the reference slit is predetermined, and a combination of the positions and lengths of the plurality of value slits being associated with the type of the card, the device comprising: a touch panel unit, on whose surface the card is placed, that receives an input of a locus produced by a pointer that slides along any slit of the card placed on the surface while moving in contact with the surface to feel the slit; an image display unit that displays an image by making the image show through the touch panel unit; a reference slit determining unit that determines whether the locus received by the touch panel unit matches the shape of the reference slit or not; a slit region display control unit that, in a case where the reference slit determining unit determines that the locus matches the shape of the reference slit, controls the image display unit to display shapes of the longest slit regions at the predetermined relative positions with respect to a position of the received locus that matches the shape of the reference slit; a value slit identifying unit that, in a case where the locus received by the touch panel unit is included in any of the displayed plurality of longest slit regions, identifies the position and length of the value slit that is included in that longest slit region, based on a position and length of the received locus; and a card identifying unit that, when, for all of the displayed plurality of longest slit regions, the position and length of the value slit included therein are identified, identifies the type of the card based on a combination of the identified positions and lengths of the value slits.