Abstract: This invention proposes a hand-held tool designed to separate and open up flat, layered, hard-to-grasp objects, such as plastic bags. An example situation which calls for such a tool is the self-checkout lane a in modern supermarket. In self-checkout lanes, both the supermarket staff and shoppers are often faced with tightly-packed bundles of shopping bags made of biodegradable plastic. These bags tend to be thin, slippery and very hard to peel off each other, so that the supermarket staff and customers often resort to licking their fingers, fumbling around to separate small bits of the shopping bag, or even applying wet rags, etc. The tool described herein allows the staff or the shoppers to easily open up a plastic bag of this kind.

Abstract: This invention proposes an identification system for license plates captured in low-quality motion video, such as accidental footage from security cameras, amateur video, cell phones, etc, including situations when the license plate number is completely unreadable. This is done by dividing the surface of the license plate into a pattern of segments assigned to a number of groups, each group possessing unique optical properties such as shading, reflectivity, IR absorption, etc. Taking advantage of the the varied light response among the segment groups, the pattern can encode identifying information, e.g. a binary sequence, which helps identify the vehicle. Using image processing software, this information can be decoded from low-quality video footage via an analysis of temporally correlated luminance levels.