Robot capable of distinguishing individual pages

[dmehling]

I have a question that could be rather far out, but potentially doable as well. I am building a robotic book scanner and I plan on using some kind of arm to pick up an individual page in order to turn it. However, because of the nature of pages sometimes wanting to stick together, it might occur frequently that I end up picking up more than one page with my arm. I was wondering if there was a way of sensing if more than one page was lifted up. I made a rough measurement and calculation and determined that the average page thickness is .02 mm, so my sensor would need to be able to distinguish something that minuscule. Is this something that should be done optically, or would it be better to use infrared or ultrasonic methods for measurement? Even better would be a consistent method of lifting up a page that would yield an error rate of 1% and then manually rescan the few pages that were missed.

 

[DaveC426913]

Look into bill counters like they use in banks and ATMs as well as printer paper feed mechanisms. They are able to very reliably pick out a single sheet from a pile without having to check afterward.

 

[GiTS]

you could have it read the page number.

 

[Danger]

That's a good idea, GiTZ, if this were a character recognition system. It isn't, though.
Dmehling, I really don't think that an arm is the easiest way to go here. I'm still working on the design that I mentioned in your other thread, but I think that I have something that will work better than an arm (and be a lot easier to build).

 

[dmehling]

What about getting a small microscope with enough magnification to distinguish individual pages? Then I would have to have some kind of camera to capture the image. Could I use a small web cam to look through the microscope and have a computer program analyze the image to determine how many pages are in view?