Method and apparatus for discriminating and counting documents

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS While the invention is susceptible to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments thereof have been shown by way of example in the drawings and will herein be described in detail.
It should be understood, however, that it is not intended to limit the invention to the particular forms disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims.
Referring now to FIGS.
1 and 2, there is shown a preferred embodiment of a currency scanning and counting machine 10 according to the present invention.
The machine 10 includes an input receptacle or bill accepting station 12 where stacks of currency bills that need to be identified and counted are positioned.
Bills in the input receptacle are acted upon by a bill separating station 14 which functions to pick out or separate one bill at a time for being sequentially relayed by a bill transport mechanism 16 (FIG.
2), according to a precisely predetermined transport path, between a pair of scanheads 18a, 18b where the currency denomination of the bill is scanned and identified.
In the preferred embodiment depicted, each scanhead 18a, 18b is an optical scanhead that scans for characteristic information from a scanned bill 17 which is used to identify the denomination of the bill.
The scanned bill 17 is then transported to an output receptacle or bill stacking station 20 where bills so processed are stacked for subsequent removal.
Each optical scanhead 18a, 18b preferably comprises a pair of light sources 22 directing light onto the bill transport path so as to illuminate a substantially rectangular light strip 24 upon a currency bill 17 positioned on the transport path adjacent the scanhead 18.
Light reflected off the illuminated strip 24 is sensed by a photodetector 26 positioned between the two light sources.
The analog output of the photodetector 26 is converted into a digital signal by means of an analog-to-digital (ADC) convertor unit 28 whose output is fed as a digital input to a central processing unit (CPU) 30