Pill Counting and Packaging Automation Using Non-contact Photo Sensor and Recognition of Characterized Feature

비접촉식 광학센서와 특징량 인식에 의한 알약 계수 및 포장 자동화

Accurate counting and packaging pills is one of the most fundamental works of the pharmaceutical industry. But it is so labor consuming and very hard to be automated. As the pharmaceutical industry is growing bigger, the need of counting and packaging automation is increasing to obtain effective mass production. Precise and quick sensing is required in the counting and processing of quickly dropping pills to improve the productivity. There are many trials for this automation and automatic machine. But the performance of the existing counting machine varies with the size, shape and the dispersion degree of pills In this research, authors design the counting and packing machine of medicinal pills that is more accurate and highly trustworthy After getting analog signal from optical sensor, pill passage is discriminated from chosen characteristic feature using microprocessor.