Orientation measurement of piece parts using single-layer networks

A technique for measuring the orientation of elongated planar objects using a number of single-layer networks is presented. This technique has been developed to be used in a noisy multiobject environment and can cope with object registration. The network consists of five discriminators, each of which has the capability to detect the directionality of an object in a certain range of angles. The memory elements of each discriminator are divided into groups. The memory elements within each group are summed and thresholded, and the outputs of the various groups within each discriminator are summed to form the output coming from the various discriminators. The connection of the memory elements is arranged in this way in order to detect the direction of the rectangle which confines the object. The network can measure the orientation of an object in the range of -10° to +90°, but this is because only five discriminators were used in the present experiment