JP2550696B2 - Bill validator - Google Patents

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention [Industrial applications]

This invention is a bill validator, and in particular, a sensor for detecting the optical and magnetic characteristic amounts of each portion of a bill is arranged in parallel at right angles to the bill transport direction, and bills are distinguished based on the output from each sensor taken out sequentially. Related to the device.

[Prior art]

In order to meet the ever-increasing demand for improving the accuracy of banknote discrimination, the number of sensors for detecting the optical and magnetic characteristics of each part of the banknote tends to increase.
In other words, in the past, a relatively small number of sensors were distributed only at key points, but considering that abnormalities such as folds, wrinkles, stains, and partial damage on the surface of circulating banknotes are larger than expected, they are distributed. The number of feature quantities collected from the sensors is not sufficient to improve the identification accuracy. Therefore, a method of detecting the characteristic amount of almost all parts of a bill is adopted. The conventional method will be described with reference to FIG. FIG. 4 is a block diagram of a main part of a discrimination device using this method. In FIG. 4, the sensors 1 to 12 are arranged side by side at right angles to the conveyance direction of the bill 70. Each sensor may be an optical sensor that detects the optical property of the banknote based on its reflected light or transmitted light, or may be a magnetic head or a magnetoresistive element that detects the magnetic property of the banknote. The outputs of the sensors 1 to 12 are amplified by the corresponding amplifiers 41 to 52, sequentially selected by the multiplexer 61 as a channel selection unit controlled by the CPU 63, and then A /
It is digitized by the D converter 62 and processed by the CPU 63. In this conventional example, the number of amplifiers 41-52 is equal to the number of sensors 1-12.
Therefore, there is a problem that the identification device becomes large in size and costly because it is necessary to provide the number corresponding to the above. In order to improve this point, there is another discriminating device having the structure shown in FIG. The apparatus configuration of FIG. 1 is common to the application example of the discrimination method according to the present invention described later. In FIG. 1, the point that this other conventional device is different from the above-mentioned conventional device is that each sensor is divided into three groups of four, and each of these sensor groups has a multiplexer 21, 22,
23 and amplifiers 31, 32, and 33 are connected, and a multiplexer 40 serving as a common channel selection unit is provided at each subsequent stage.
That is, the A / D converter 50 and the CPU 60 are provided. The multiplexers 21, 22, 23, 40 are controlled by the CPU 60. By doing so, the number of multiplexers is increased, but the number of amplifiers is reduced, so that the overall size and cost can be reduced.

[Problems to be Solved by the Invention]

In the device based on another conventional method as described above,
As will be described later, there is a problem that a continuous leak portion, that is, a missing portion occurs in the detection area of each sensor, which improves the identification accuracy. In this conventional device, the bill 70 conveyed in the direction of the arrow
The detection area by each of the sensors 1 to 12 is as shown in the schematic view of FIG. In FIG. 5, the detection area of each sensor is shown as a hatched square area of the banknote 70. That is, the sensors 1, 2, 3, which belong to the first sensor group,
In the case of 4 as a representative, the detection areas are sequentially selected,
In the first cycle 1C of the selection, the detection areas A1, A2, A3, A4 in the banknote 70 are juxtaposed diagonally from the lower left end to the upper right direction as shown in FIG. In FIG. 5, the detection regions are shown as connected to each other, but they may be connected at a certain interval. Similarly, the second and subsequent cycles of the first sensor group
By expanding C2, C3, ... And other sensor groups, the arrangement of the respective detection areas over the entire surface of the bill 70 can be obtained as shown in the figure. As is apparent from FIG. 5, in the arrangement of the respective detection areas in this case, the diagonally continuous blank strip portions become the missing portions of the feature detection, that is, the missing portions. The presence of such continuous strip-shaped missing portions means that the features of the banknote are not detected in a grouped form, and as a result, the accuracy of discrimination may be reduced. The problem to be solved by the present invention is to solve the above problems of the conventional technology, to reduce the size and cost of the device, and to omit the feature amount of each part of the banknote, in other words, to lack the detected feature amount. An object of the present invention is to provide a bill discriminating apparatus capable of improving the discriminating accuracy by preventing the portions from being formed as continuously as possible.

[Means for Solving the Problems]

In order to solve this problem, in the present invention, at a right angle to the transport direction of the banknote, and comprising a line sensor composed of a plurality of detection elements arranged in parallel in a row, while the banknote passes Performing several cycles of scanning along the transport direction, in a device that distinguishes banknotes based on the data corresponding to the feature amount of each part of the banknotes output from each detection element, a line sensor from the same number of continuous detection elements Are divided into a plurality of sensor groups, and each of these sensor groups performs sampling of the feature amount data in an order different from the arrangement order (ascending order and descending order) of the detection elements during the scanning period of one cycle. It is characterized by having done.

[Work]

The output of each detection element belonging to each detection element group is sequentially taken out in a different order from the order in which the detection elements are arranged, not by a selection operation in a predetermined direction. In other words, the missing portion of the detected feature amount has the same total amount, but is continuously dispersed and subdivided.

【Example】

A bill discriminating apparatus which is an application example of the bill discriminating method according to the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. First
The figure is a block diagram showing the configuration of this bill discriminating apparatus, which is the same as that used in the description of the conventional example. However, the selection operation of each sensor is different. FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of a detection area by each sensor (detection element) in this bill discriminating apparatus. In FIG. 1, the sensors 1, 2, 3, 4 belonging to the first sensor group will be described representatively. In the first cycle C1, the selection order of the sensors is 1, 2, 4, 3. In order,
As a result, the detection areas A1, A2, A4, A of the banknote 70 by each sensor
3 is indicated by four hatched squares. Less than,
For the second and third cycles C2 and C3 and later, the second and third cycles
When the bill 70 is conveyed in the direction of the arrow, the arrangement of the hatched detection areas as shown in FIG. 1 can be obtained by expanding the respective sensor groups. The arrangement of the detection areas in this case is different from that of the conventional apparatus in that the missing portions (blanks) of the detection areas are dispersed and subdivided. That is, although the total amount of the missing parts in the detection area is the same, the missing parts are divided, so that it is less likely that important features of the banknote will be overlooked, and this will not cause a significant decrease in the hardness of the banknote discrimination. By the way, the selection operation of each sensor has various orders as shown in FIGS. 3 (a) to 3 (c). Here, FIG. 3A shows each sensor belonging to the first sensor group.
When the outputs of 1,2,3,4 are taken out in the order of the sensors 1,3,2,4, FIG. 3 (b) shows each sensor 1,2 belonging to the first sensor group.
When the output of 2,3,4 is taken out in the order of sensor 1,4,2,3,
FIG. 3 (c) shows the sensors 1, 2, 3, which belong to the first sensor group.
4 shows the case where the outputs of 4 are taken out in the order of the sensors 1, 3, 4, 2. It should be noted that FIG. 6 shows the case where the outputs of the sensors belonging to the first sensor group are taken out in the order of the sensors 1, 4, 3, and 2, but as is clear from the figure, they are surrounded by the one-dot chain line. Considering the partial area, the sensor outputs are taken out in the parallel order of the sensors as in the above-mentioned conventional example.
The requirements of the present invention are not satisfied, and a large missing portion is generated in the diagonal direction. In short, in the present invention, the output of each sensor belonging to each sensor group may be sequentially taken out in an order different from the sensor parallel order.

【The invention's effect】

As is clear from the above description, according to the present invention, the missing parts of the feature amount data are dispersed and subdivided, and the band-like missing area parts seen in the conventional device are not generated.
The accuracy of discrimination can be improved. Further, since it is not necessary to increase the number of detection elements or shorten the sampling interval (data acquisition interval), it can be realized at low cost and the time required for the discrimination processing does not increase, and it is practically used. Extremely useful.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration of an application example of the bill discriminating apparatus according to the present invention, and FIGS. 2 and 3 (a), (b), and (c) show detection areas of respective sensors in this application example. FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing a configuration of an application example of one conventional method, and FIG. 5 is a schematic diagram of different detection regions by each sensor in an application example of another conventional method. Reference numeral 1 to 12: sensor (detection element), 21 to 23, 40: multiplexer, 31 to 33: amplifier, 50: A / D converter, 60: CPU.

Claims (1)

(57) [Claims] 1. A line sensor comprising a plurality of detection elements arranged in a line at right angles to the banknote transport direction and having a number of sensors along the banknote transport direction while the banknote passes through. In a device that performs cycle scanning and discriminates banknotes based on the data corresponding to the feature amount of each banknote output from each detection element, the line sensor includes a plurality of sensor groups each including the same number of detection elements. The banknote discriminating apparatus is characterized in that each of these sensor groups performs sampling of the characteristic amount data in an order different from the arrangement order of the detection elements during the scanning period of one cycle.