Patent ID: 8140395

Claim:
An apparatus for enrolling a package placed in a stationary position on a stationary receiving surface comprising: the stationary receiving surface; at least one weight sensor in communication with the receiving surface which generates a weight signal indicative of the weight of the package; a video camera unit located above the receiving surface on a support arm, wherein the camera unit: operates in a first mode characterized by a relatively large two dimensional field of view to generate a first video signal characterized by a relatively low resolution and relatively high frame rate, and operates in a second mode characterized by a relatively small field of view to generate a video signal characterized by a relatively high resolution and a relatively low frame rate; and a processor in communication with the at least one weight sensor and the at least one video camera, said processor comprising: a weight module which produces, in response to the weight signal, weight data indicative of the weight of the package; a dimension capture module which produces, in response to one or more of the first video signal and the second video signal, dimension data indicative of the size of the package, wherein the dimension capture module comprises a tracking module which produces, in response to the first video signal, tracking data indicative of the presence and location of the package on the receiving surface, wherein the tracking information comprises length and width dimension data indicative of the size of the package along two axes lying in a plane parallel to the receiving surface, and height dimension data indicative of the size of the package along an axis transverse to the plane parallel to the receiving surface; and a recognition module which produces, in response to the second video signal, character data indicative of one or more characters present on the package; wherein the processor is configured to automatically switch the camera unit between the first and second modes; and wherein each of the first and second video signals comprises a stream of two dimensional image frames.