In an automatic curve tracing system wherein an area containing a curve to be traced is scanned by a detector and the detector is moved successively according to a positional information obtained by the scanning operation, there is provided apparatus for judging a branch and or crossing including means to judge whether the branch and or crossing are included or not in the scanning area and means to store the result of the judgement while the same branch and or crossing are contained in the subse...

A method of recognition of signs in which a scanning beam, passed circularly across the overall line width of a sign, is caused to follow up the contour of a sign and in which a signal sequence significant of the sign is derived from further circular scanning ramifications, uninterrupted lines and termini of the signs being recognized from the number of black-white transitions per scanning period. The arc determined by the width and phase of the scanning pulse and covering a line last scanned wi...

A harvester is disclosed that sweeps nuts and the like from the ground along with other debris, such as leaves and sticks, and separates the nuts from most of such debris before conveying the nuts to storage. The nuts, along with the debris picked up with them, are transferred into a cylinder having perforated sidewalls that is mounted for rotation around its longitudinal axis. The longitudinal axis of the cylinder is horizontal so that the nuts and debris are carried upwardly along an arcuate p...

A method of recognizing characters of varying stroke width by linear traverse is disclosed. A character is stored in a matrix of electrical storage cells with character cell positions distinguished from background cell positions by the presence of digital signals. A stored character is examined by using a predetermined group form (for example, a 2 .times. 2 square, a cruciform, a triangle or a 4 .times. 4 square) to sense for predetermined form characteristics (for example, two adjacent characte...

An image processing device has an image memory for storing image data, a semi-automatically trace processing for tracing line images of the image data by entering a trace starting point of the image data and an instruction to start tracing, and a display input unit for giving an instruction to enter on a display screen, thereby starting tracing the line images of the image data from the trace starting point thereof. In the method for entering the trace starting points, the image of the image dat...

Circumnavigation using an increased test cell domain may be used to collect data from discontinuous characters stored in a bit map such as those printed by a dot matrix printer. The test cell domain is increased to locate a pixel and consider it a portion of the same character if it is within the minimum permissable pixel gap range. The sequence of testing must be designed to read each possible pixel and not enter an endless loop during the circumnavigation. One sequence of testing is to begin t...

An apparatus for detecting one or more contours of an image formed on a screen. The apparatus comprises a scanner for raster scanning pixels located on scan lines extending in paralllel with each other in the X direction of a two-dimensional coordinate system to successively produce binary pixel data regarding the scanned pixels. The binary pixel data have a first value representing a background forming pixel or a second value representing an object forming pixel. The binary pixel data are trans...

A method is provided for identifying and locating curves within a digitized image. Digitized images are comprised of points which may represent curves stored as an array of binary coded elements in an memory device. Each addressable memory location in the array represents a single point or pixel. Particular curves within a scanned image are identified by randomly selecting a minimal subset of points which are necessary to generate a general equation for that curve; the equation along with a poin...

An image processor for performing trace processing for tracing the line image has an image memory for storing image data, a data memory for storing graphic data, a display unit for displaying the image data and the graphic data, an input unit for entering trace designation, a semi-automatic image trace processing section for performing the trace processing for tracing the line image of the image data in a semi-automatic way, and a tracing-rule description processing section for designating a tra...

A method for re-tracing an end point of an image by an image processing device for converting the line images of the image data into vector data in a semi-automatic way by tracing plural line images and converting them into one vector data. The method for re-tracing the end point of the image involves tracing the line images by transferring the tracing points on the line images and continuing the previous trace processing for re-tracing the line image which follows by waiting for an instruction ...