COIN DISCRIMINATING APPARATUS

A coin discriminating apparatus including a light projector for projecting light onto a coin, a light receiver for receiving light reflected by the coin and producing pattern data of the coin, pattern data memory for storing the pattern data as mapped into an x-y coordinate system, a center coordinate calculator for determining a center coordinate of the pattern data mapped in the x-y coordinate system in the pattern data memory, a pattern data converter for, based upon the center coordinate of the pattern data in the x-y coordinate system, the pattern data stored in the pattern data memory into an r-.theta. coordinate system and producing converted pattern data, a reference pattern data memory for storing reference pattern data mapped in the r-.theta. coordinate system and a coin discriminator for correcting the converted pattern data along a .theta.-axis and comparing the corrected converted pattern data with the reference pattern data to discriminate the coin. According to the thus constituted coin discriminating apparatus, it is possible to discriminate coins with high accuracy and at high speed.