Dec 07/Jan/08

A portable handheld camera scanner said to be ideal for scanning 'difficult' goods such as awkward-shaped parcels has been launched by Vitronic, a specialist in camera systems for warehousing and logistics.

Unlike handheld laser scanners, VICAM-mobile is said to be able to read badly damaged or incomplete barcodes, human-written addresses, quantity data and supplier numbers. The company claims that it operates up to twenty times faster than laser scanners and has a read rate of 99.9 per cent.

Its high-speed, auto-focus, line-scan camera captures high-resolution, photographic images of parcel labels within an area of 300mm by 300mm. The system automatically identifies the relevant data (regions of interest) and interprets it using optical character recognition (OCR) techniques and advanced software.

Vitronic says that in 'the unlikely event' of encountering an unreadable label, VICAM-mobile sends the image to a videocoding workstation via a quick, intelligent network, where the operator manually enters the information. This saves diverting the parcel off the line for later sorting.

The VICAM-mobile weighs just 800g and is said to have ergonomic, user-friendly controls. VICAM-mobile is compatible with VIPAC, Vitronic's existing camera-based parcel recognition system.