Patent ID: 8328190

Claim:
A sheet feeding apparatus comprising: a stacking tray adapted to stack sheets; a sheet feeding member adapted to feed the sheets incoming from said stacking tray into a conveying path; a separating member adapted to be disposed opposite to said sheet feeding member across said conveying path and separate the sheets fed to said conveying path by said sheet feeding member one by one; a double feed detection sensor adapted to generate an output for detecting double feed of sheets fed to said conveying path; a rotatable roller adapted to be disposed at a position downstream of said sheet feeding member; a driving unit adapted to rotationally drive said rotatable roller in a rotational direction for reverse feeding of sheets; and a control unit adapted to control said driving unit such that at least said rotatable roller is rotationally driven in said rotational direction for reverse feeding of sheets when the double feed of sheets is detected based on the output of said double feed detection sensor, wherein said rotatable roller is disposed so as to be movable to a position contacting the sheet fed to said conveying path and a position separated from the sheet.