Are two closely spaced tablets necessarily overlapping?
No. Spacing concerns the separation between products; overlap concerns one product obscuring another in the relevant sensing view. The viewing direction matters: a pair may look separated from one direction and obscure each other from another.
Closely spaced products can remain optically distinct, while complete overlap can hide one behind another. Product separation can reduce overlap, but a close pair is not automatically a known counting error.
Describe the presentation before naming the result
Observation
What remains to establish
Closely spaced units
Whether distinct sensor events were resolved.
Partly obscured units
What signal or feature remained visible.
Complete overlap in the sensing view
Whether the installed system can distinguish the pair.
Does an overlap prove that the bottle was underfilled?
It identifies a presentation condition, not the reference contents of the resulting bottle. To claim a count error, compare the reported and independently established counts for the same observation. To claim underfill, compare bottle contents with the target.
Retain the pair’s orientation and obscuration, the installed sensing principle and the recorded response. A generic “overlap detected” statement should not be extended to every possible pair or to physical bottle rejection.