GB2434108A

GB2434108A - Roulette wheels

Info

Publication number: GB2434108A
Application number: GB0600684A
Authority: GB
Inventors: Anton James Churchill; Steven James Slough
Original assignee: Individual
Current assignee: Individual
Priority date: 2006-01-13
Filing date: 2006-01-13
Publication date: 2007-07-18
Also published as: WO2007080421A1; WO2007080421B1; GB0600684D0

Abstract

Sensors (20) are placed around the inner upper edge of the housing surrounding the rotatable portion of the roulette wheel, to monitor the passage of the roulette ball before it drops on to the rotating wheel. Separately, the bases of the pockets (7) in the rotating wheel portion (1) are radiation transparent enabling the detection of a roulette ball once it has lodged in one of the pockets (7) and, via positional encoding of the rotatable portion of the wheel (26), the number associated with the pocket in which the ball has come to rest, i.e. the winning number for that play, may be automatically detected and then displayed. Such sensor-equipped wheels may look identical to a traditional wheel, but may be used in roulette games where some at least of the players are located remotely from the wheel itself.

Description

ROULETTE WHEELS

This invention relates to roulette wheels and more particularly to roulette wheels which are adapted to enable secure, accurate and monitored operation particularly in conjunction with distributed play, i.e. play in which participation is not limited to a relatively small number of people physically gathered around a roulette table.

Since its development, roulette has been a popular casino game, part of its attraction being its transparency of operation. Rendering the outcome, i.e. which numbered pocket of the rotating wheel portion of the roulette wheel the ball falls into, otherwise than random is difficult, and the result is instantly and clearly visible to those playing. The variety of the different types of bets which may be placed allows for different game playing strategies to be practised and the game remains very popular.

In recent years, a number of suggestions have been proposed to monitor and/or mechanise roulette wheels and the tables associated with them for a variety of purposes. With the development and availability of electronic displays, the markings on roulette tables may be back-illuminated.

Additionally, sensing means may be associated with the roulette wheel itself with a view to determining parameters such as the direction of spin of the rotatable wheel portion and into which of the specific numbered pockets in that rotatable portion the ball comes to rest.

In this connection, a variety of suggestions have been made in the patent literature and some commercially launched products have appeared in the marketplace directed to sensing the ball position once it has reached a pocket. Some of these have relied on the positioning of some form of sensor or detector head above the edge of the rotating wheel portion, which, while effective, is unaesthetic and disliked by the traditional physical players present round the wheel.

Sensing ball position purely from under the wheel using a proximity sensor, has been suggested for example as disclosed in US-A-473541 6, but, generally, optical sensors have been used to sense ball position, for example as shown in US-A-43961 93 and GB-A-2348821. US-A-4643425 discloses a system which detects the ball position with the assistance of a photo cell located above the edge of the rotating portion of the roulette wheel and mounted on the casing surrounding that portion.

US-A-5836583 discloses a unit which is designed to be mounted on the rim of the outer casing of a roulette wheel and which detects light reflected from the ball as it passes the unit, using modulated light to increase reliability of operation.

None of these systems is well-suited to the real time monitoring and operation of a roulette wheel while maintaining its traditional and familiar appearance set in a roulette table and where, in addition to the players located immediately physically adjacent the table, play is also engaged in via appropriate local or wide area communications technology, by a number of others.

The rules of roulette do vary slightly from country to country and, indeed, within jurisdictions but, generally speaking, they require that for each "play", the rotating wheel portion of the roulette wheel is spun, bets are placed by the players, a ball is then propelled into the annular track which surrounds the rotating wheel, with sufficient speed to ensure that it continues around the track for several laps and then, as its energy is dissipated, drops downwards and radially inwards towards the rotating wheel portion, eventually coming to rest in one of the numbered pockets. This basic structure of each play is the same irrespective of whether the wheel is continuously rotated by a suitable drive means or whether it is spun manually by the croupier, continuing to rotate under its own momentum, and irrespective of whether the ball is projected into the track manually by the croupier or mechanically by an appropriate mechanism, often referred to as a "ballshooter".

At some point during the play, the croupier calls a halt to the placing of further bets, usually just before the ball starts to approach the rotating wheel portion.

Once the ball has become securely lodged in one of the pockets of the rotating wheel portion, which pocket it is lodged in needs to be detected, so that the result can be announced and the stakes collected and payouts made consequent on the bets being placed and the result itself. This is conventionally done by a croupier located at the roulette table for those who are physically present there and is done automatically for players operating on a remote basis, e.g. via the Internet or a local area network in a large casino.

According to a first feature of the present invention, there is provided a roulette wheel consisting of a rotatable wheel set in a surrounding casing, wherein the casing has an annular surface providing a track around which a ball may travel, the lower edge of the annular surface being substantially located at the same height as the edge of the rotating wheel when the roulette wheel is in use, and wherein, located at a number of angularly spaced positions around the track, sensors are provided to enable detection of the passage of a ball past the sensor as it circulates in the track.

According to a further feature of the present invention, there is provided a roulette wheel comprising a rotatable segmented wheel mounted for rotation about a generally vertical axis in an external housing, the rotatable wheel having a set of angularly spaced segments with a depression in each segment adapted to receive a ball rolling from a surface of the housing on to the surface of the rotatable wheel under the effect of gravity, and characterised in that the base of the pocket is formed of transparent material and that, at two or more angularly spaced positions below the rotatable wheel, there is located an emitter/sensor unit, wherein the emitter is capable of emitting radiation which will pass through the transparent window and be reflected from a ball above the window (if present) and the sensor is adapted to detect emitted radiation reflected from the ball.

Preferably the direction of emitted and reflected radiation is not at an angle substantially normal to the transparent window itself. Preferably there are at least three emitter/sensor units located at spaced positions around the axis of the rotatable wheel and below it. Preferably the rotatable wheel also carries a position coding disc or ring and, adjacent the position coding disc or ring, in fixed relationship to the housing, is a detector unit capable of sensing the coding on the ring and providing a signal representative thereof.

The individual features of the invention indicated above may be used separately or, preferably, are used in combination in order to provide a roulette wheel which is susceptible to being used in a conventional casino type environment, i.e. located at one end of a roulette table and supervised by a human croupier, but which at the same time may be enabled by suitable electronics to link with not only an appropriate audit and data storage system located in the casino itself, but additionally to enable the condition of the wheel to be transmitted essentially instantaneously via a communications network to players remote from the physical location of the wheel itself.

By using appropriate processing techniques on signals derived from the various sensors, the details of each "play" may be continuously monitored and appropriate details recorded for audit purposes. Thus, the sensors located in the housing at spaced positions round the annular ball track may provide signals which indicate the direction of rotation of the ball in the track as well as essentially counting the number of times the ball rotates in the track before it falls downwardly on to the rotating wheel. If the number of laps traversed by the ball is insufficient for the play to be a valid one under local regulations, that play can be instantaneously aborted and, by using appropriate visual or audio-visual signalling means, the croupier and the players may be alerted to this fact. Also, the decision as to when to cut off the betting may be automatically generated and signalled to those at the table as well as to remote players.

The length of time between the ball leaving the track and coming to rest in one of the pockets in the rotating wheel may likewise be monitored and, as soon as the ball has come to rest in one of the pockets, it is possible very rapidly to determine which pocket it is since, sooner or later, that pocket will travel past the emitter/sensor unit located below it and a signal representative of a ball being present may be combined with a signal derived from the coding disc to enable the electronics to identify the number associated with the pocket and display it or (using standard voice synthesis technology) announce it.

The detailed programming and operation of roulette using wheels in accordance with the invention may vary very widely and the appropriate programming must be undertaken to enable them to be operated. The present description does not go into details of that since it is standard and straightforward. Rather, the invention resides in the various features, separately or taken together, identified above. It should, however, be observed that, by using sensor data, not only in real time to monitor and control each play', but by storing it for later analysis, very sophisticated monitoring of the performance of each wheel may be achieved, leading either to the detection of under-performance of the wheel itself (in which case it may be repaired or reformatted) or to the detection of interference with its operation.

The invention may be applied to roulette wheels which are purely hand-spun and to those driven in continuous rotation.

By way of illustration (and not by way of limitation), a roulette wheel constructed in accordance with the present invention is shown in more detail in the accompanying drawings in which: Figure 1 is a part broken away general perspective view of a roulette wheel in accordance with the present invention, Figure 2 is a diagrammatic illustration relating to the detection of the presence of a ball, and Figure 3 is a diagrammatic representation of a modular sensor unit for installation below the rotating wheel portion in the housing of the roulette wheel.

Referring to the drawings, and more particularly Figure 1, the particular embodiment of a roulette wheel according to the invention illustrated in the drawings consists of a rotatable wheel 1 set in a generally cylindrical outer casing 2. The wheel itself is mounted on a central bearing assembly generally indicated at 3 and has an upwardly projecting vertical stub shaft 5 which may be twisted to rotate the wheel 1 about a vertical axis.

The mass, and accordingly the inertia of the wheel when rotating, are substantial so that, once set in rotation, the wheel will continue to rotate, in whichever direction it is spun, for some time before gradually slowing down.

As indicated, the upper surface of the wheel consists of an inner generally frusto-conical surface 6 which extends from the base of the stub shaft 5 downwards to a ring of pockets 7. Radially outwardly of pockets 7 is located a marked annular frusto-conical section 10 which bears the numbers 1 to 36, 0 and, if appropriate, 00 in conventional fashion, displayed in red and black as is traditional.

Surrounding the outer rim of the wheel 1 is a sloping frusto-conical surface 12 having a series of raised lozenge-shaped bumps formed in it or set on to it, these being denoted 14 in the drawing and being arranged to interfere with the direction of travel of the ball which passes across surface 12 when a "play" of roulette is carried out.

Surface 12 merges into an annular ring surface 16 which, in cross-section in a vertical plane, is concave and shaped so that if a roulette ball is projected in a direction substantially tangential to but slightly spaced from the edge of the rotating wheel, it then is forced to roll around against the surface 16, held against that surface by centrifugal force so long as its speed is sufficient. As its speed drops after a few revolutions (provided it has been impelled to run round the rim with sufficient velocity in the first place), the ball drops towards the surface 12 rolling as it does so, usually then impacting on one or more of the raised areas 14 and eventually rolling across surface 10 and into one of the pockets 7. It may do so without venturing on to the frusto-conical surface 6, but sometimes the momentum possessed by the ball is sufficient that it initially jumps the ring of pockets 7 and then rolls back down from surface 6 to lodge, sooner or later, in one of the pockets 7.

While it is circulating in the track 16, the ball goes successively past five detector heads 20 mounted around the upper edge of the surface 16 and located inside casing 2. These may be optical, magnetic or some other variety of detector, the only necessary criterion being that they are able to provide a signal when a ball passes them. With suitable electronics connected to the outputs of the detectors 20 it is straightforward to determine when a ball is rolling round the track, how fast it is going and in which direction.

The floor of each pocket 7 is made of transparent material. By this is not necessarily meant a material which, to the human eye, looks transparent, but rather one which is transparent to light type radiation from an appropriate source, in particular transparent to infrared radiation. By suitable choice of materials, the base of each pocket may be made to look exactly like the normal base of a conventional roulette wheel, but nevertheless be transparent to radiation which may be reflected from a ball, if there is one in the pocket.

Located at three equally angularly spaced positions about the axis of rotation of the wheel, and underneath the wheel in the casing 2, are three generally wedge-shaped sensor support plates 25. These contain various sensors, the operation of which will be described below. In particular, radially inner sensors may detect markings on the undersurface of a disc 26 which is fixed to the underside of the rotatable wheels 1.

Turning now to the sensor support plates 25, one of these is illustrated in an enlarged scale, diagrammatically, and not installed in the roulette wheel itself, in Figure 3.

As can be seen, set on the sensor support plate 25 is a line of seven optical semiconductor sensor devices 28, and, separately, an emitter/sensor combination 30, 31. Emitter 30 is configured to emit light of a given wavelength, most preferably infrared, while the sensor 31 is sensitive to such radiation.

Angularly spaced from emitter 30 and sensor 31 is a second emitter/sensor pair3o,31'.

Diagrammatically indicated in Figure 3 is the location of the generally trapezoidal-shaped base of one of the pockets 7, denoted 33 in Figure 3.

Additionally to that, the position of a ball in such a pocket is indicated at 34.

The precise operation of ball sensing is illustrated diagrammatically in Figure 2. This essentially shows a vertical section through the floor of one of the pockets 7 which, as illustrated, consists of a thin sheet of acrylic plastics material denoted 40. The emitter 30 or 30' is a conventional packaged component which is arranged to emit a beam of infrared radiation in a specific direction and this emitted beam is denoted 41 in Figure 2.

As can be seen from the right-hand portion of the Figure, where there is no ball located in the pocket, i.e. above the acrylic plastics sheet 40, the radiation passes predominantly through the sheet 40, emergent beam 42 shown in the drawing, though there will be minor reflected beams denoted 43 at the two surfaces of sheet 40. However, because beam 41 is directed not normally to the plane of sheet 40, these minor reflections 43 are directed laterally away from the incident beam 41.

The left-hand portion of Figure 2 shows the position when a roulette ball is lying on top of sheet 40, the ball being denoted 50. The surface of a roulette ball is conventionally highly polished metal and this constitutes a good mirror reflective surface so that, instead of an emergent beam 42, a reflected beam 45 travels back from the ball through the acrylic sheet 40. As it does so, there are minor reflective losses denoted 46 which, from obvious geometrical considerations, are directed oppositely to the stray reflection beams 43, but, as can be seen, the reflected beam 45 is pointing back at the location of the emitter and accordingly if the emitter 30, 30' is placed adjacent the respective sensor 31, 31', then the sensor will pick up the reflected beam 45 and the processing electronics connected to the sensor can then interpret the reflection as indicating the presence of a ball.

The use of infrared radiation emitters and detectors is convenient not least because the radiation they emit is invisible to the human eye and accordingly, combined with the fact that the sheet 40 may be non-transparent to optical wavelengths means that the detection is completely invisible, i.e. the roulette wheel looks just as it does normally. However, there are often many sources of infrared radiation around, ie. there is a lot of "background noise", in particular from lighting apparatus, for example, in the context of the present invention, the high-powered down lighters which conventionally illuminate the playing area of a roulette table and, more particularly, the wheel, so that everyone can see what is going on.

In order to be able to compensate for this, the signals from emitter/sensor combination 30, 31 and emitter/sensor combination 30, 31' may be compared. Put very simply, by continuously subtracting the background noise signal from detector 31' from the signal from detector 31 (as shown in Figure 3), the signal resulting from reflection from the ball 34 may be identified, so substantially increasing the reliability of proper detection, and this may be further increased by providing, as shown in Figure 1, more than one sensor support plate and arranging the software to delay the announcement of which pocket the ball has lodged in until, for example, the same result has been produced by two successive ball detections.

A further feature which may be incorporated into the processing of the signals from the sensors 31, 31' is to look at the signals only at a point in time when the sensors are "looking at" the underside of the base of each pocket, and correspondingly ignoring the signal when the sensor is pointing -11 -at the dividing wall between two adjacent pockets.

These dividing walls are normally made of metal and can accordingly give rise to substantial spurious reflections of the beam from the respective emitter, so it is best to look at the signals from the sensors only when the dividing walls are out of the way. This may be easily achieved electronically, particularly since the precise angular position of the wheel as it rotates is continuously being detected by the row of sensors 28 and their associated electronics, the sensors reacting to the coded disc on the underside of the

rotatable wheell.

Clearly, numerous modifications may be made in terms of the detailed construction of the wheel, but, as can be seen from Figure 1, the overall appearance of the wheel to the roulette players is substantially identical to the appearance of a traditional purely mechanical roulette wheel, i.e. one having no sensors of any sort, and just one moving part -the rotatable wheel itself. -12-

Claims

CLAIMS

1. A roulette wheel consisting of a rotatable wheel set in a surrounding casing, wherein the casing has an annular surface providing a track around which a ball may travel, the lower edge of the annular surface being substantially located at the same height as the edge of the rotating wheel when the roulette wheel is in use, and wherein, located at a number of angularly spaced positions around the track, sensors are provided to enable detection of the passage of a ball past the sensor as it circulates in the track.

2. A roulette wheel comprising a rotatable segmented wheel mounted for rotation about a generally vertical axis in an external housing, the rotatable wheel having a set of angularly spaced segments with a depression in each segment adapted to receive a ball rolling from a surface of the housing on to the surface of the rotatable wheel under the effect of gravity, and characterised in that the base of the pocket is formed of transparent material and that, at two or more angularly spaced positions below the rotatable wheel, there is located an emitter/sensor unit, wherein the emitter is capable of emitting radiation which will pass through the transparent window and be reflected from a ball above the window (if present) and the sensor is adapted to detect emitted radiation reflected from the ball.

3. A roulette wheel according to Claim 2 wherein the direction of emitted and reflected radiation is not at an angle substantially normal to the transparent window.

4. A roulette wheel according to Claim 2 or 3 and including at least three emitter/sensor units located at spaced positions around the axis of the rotatable wheel and below it.

5. A roulette wheel according to any one of Claims 2 to 4 wherein the rotatable wheel carries a position coding disc or ring and, adjacent the -13-position coding disc or ring, in fixed relationship to the housing, is a detector unit capable of sensing the coding on the ring and providing a signal representative thereof.

6. A roulette wheel according to any one of Claims 2 to 5 and according to Claim 1.

7. A roulette wheel according to any one of the preceding Claims and including electronics associated with the sensors and adapted to provide signals enabling the condition of the wheel to be transmitted essentially instantaneously via a communications network to players remote from the physical location of the wheel itself.