JP2000020230A - Optical mouse scanner - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To obtain an optical mouse scanner which can detect information on a coordinate position not on a mouse pad and output a two-dimensional scan image. SOLUTION: This optical mouse scanner is equipped with a light emitting element 2 which irradiates a subject 1 with light, an image pickup lens 3 which forms an image by converging the reflected light from the subject 1, an image pickup element 4 which picks up the image formed by the image pickup lens 3, and an operation element 7 which forms the scan image by comparing a 1st image picked up at certain specific time with a 2nd image picked up after the 1st image and outputting a partial image of the 2nd image which is absent in the 1st image.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an optical mouse scanner used for an information processing device such as a computer.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art FIG. 8 is a longitudinal sectional view showing a conventional optical mouse disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 8-137613. In the figure, 1 is a mouse pad on which a line pattern is formed, 2 is a light emitting diode that irradiates infrared rays to the mouse pad 1, 3 is an imaging lens that collects reflected light from the mouse pad 1, 4 is a mouse lens from An image sensor 5 for imaging with reflected light is a mouse case.

Next, the operation will be described. The light emitting diode 2 irradiates the mouse pad 1 with the line pattern formed thereon with infrared light. The reflected light is condensed by the image pickup lens 3, and the image pickup device 4 detects the image pickup and the information of the coordinate position.

FIG. 9 is a perspective view showing an attitude control device disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 9-134250. In the figure, 3 is an imaging lens, 4 is a two-dimensional array of optical sensors, 6 is an optical integrated circuit chip, and 7 is a processing circuit.

Next, the operation will be described. Optical sensor 2
The dimensional array 4 captures an image and acquires a reference frame and a sample frame. The processing circuit 7 correlates the acquired sample frame with the reference frame to detect a positional difference in the common characteristics, and generates a posture signal indicating the up, down, left, and right swings of the control device. Therefore, it can be used as an optical mouse that does not use a mouse pad.

[0006]

Problems to be Solved by the Invention
In the case of the conventional example disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 613, there is a problem that information of a coordinate position can be detected only on a mouse pad, and a scanned image of a meaningful two-dimensional image such as a document cannot be output. Was.

Further, in the case of the conventional example disclosed in the above-mentioned Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 9-134250, it is possible to detect the position without a mouse pad, but it is not possible to output a scanned image. There was a problem that the function as can not be fulfilled.

The present invention has been made to solve the above problems, and can detect coordinate position information and output a scanned image of a two-dimensional image without using a mouse pad. The aim is to obtain an optical mouse scanner.

[0009]

An optical mouse scanner according to the present invention includes a light source for irradiating a subject with light, an imaging lens for converging reflected light from the subject to form an image, and an imaging lens formed by the imaging lens. An image sensor that captures the image, compares a first image captured at a specific time, and a second image captured at a time later than the first image, and generates a first image An arithmetic element for forming a scanned image by outputting a partial image of the second image that does not exist is provided.

Further, the image pickup device and the arithmetic device are integrated on one semiconductor device.

[0011]

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Embodiment 1 Hereinafter, an embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a longitudinal sectional view showing an optical mouse scanner according to Embodiment 1 of the present invention, and FIG. 2 is a top view. In the drawing, reference numeral 1 denotes a subject composed of a two-dimensional image such as a document, a drawing, and a photograph on a table on which a mouse is moved, 2 denotes a light emitting element that emits light toward the subject 1, and 3 denotes an imaging device that collects reflected light from the subject 1. lens,
Reference numeral 4 denotes an image sensor that captures an image with reflected light from the subject 1, 5 denotes a mouse case, 7 denotes an arithmetic element that processes an image captured by the image sensor 4, and 8 denotes the light reflected from the mouse pad 1 entering the imaging lens 3. A prism 9, a communication element for communicating with an information device main body such as an external personal computer, 10 a memory for storing an image captured by the imaging element 4, 11 a switch for switching from a mouse mode to a scanner mode, 1
Reference numeral 2 denotes a mouse operation switch for performing a mouse operation.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart for explaining the operation of the arithmetic element of the optical mouse scanner according to the first embodiment of the present invention. FIGS. 4 to 6 are diagrams showing examples of subjects of the optical mouse scanner according to the first embodiment of the present invention. In the figure, 101 is a virtual square corresponding to the pixel of the image sensor, 102 is a character "L" written on a document as a subject, and 103 is a character "E".

Next, the operation will be described. Irradiation light emitted from the light emitting element 2 through the prism 8 illuminates the subject 1. The reflected light reflected from the subject 1 is refracted by the prism 8 and forms an image on the imaging device 4 by the imaging lens 3. The reflected light from the subject 1 is converted into an electric signal by the image sensor 4 and sent to the arithmetic element 7.

Here, the operation of the arithmetic element 7 will be described with reference to FIG. 3 in the case of the scanner mode. First, in step S1, when the changeover switch 11 is pressed to enter the scanner mode, in step S2, the subject 1 is irradiated from the light emitting element 2 and the image pickup element 4 captures a first image of the subject 1. The captured image is transmitted to an external information processing device such as a personal computer via the communication element 9 in step S3, and is stored in the primary memory 10 in step S4.

Next, in step S5, step S5
A second image is captured similarly to the first image after the capturing time of the first image captured in step 2. In step S6, the correlation between the first image and the second image is obtained, and the moving direction and the moving amount of the mouse scanner are detected.

Here, a method of obtaining a correlation between the first image and the second image will be described with reference to FIGS. When scanning a document on which the characters "L" and "E" shown in FIG. 4 are written, the first image shown in FIG. 5A is fetched in the first frame, and the image shown in FIG. Suppose that the second image shown in FIG. At this time, the first image shown in FIG. 5A is shifted by one pixel in the direction from 0 to 8 shown in FIG. 5C, and is superimposed on the second image shown in FIG. The correlation, that is, the product of the pixels at the corresponding pixel positions of the two images is taken, and the product is summed over all the pixels. Note that the direction 0 is a case where the images are superimposed without being shifted at all. Fig. 5 shows the result of superimposing the correlation.
In the images from 0 to 8 shown in (d), the sum of black in the figure is the correlation value in each direction.

The direction having the largest value among the obtained nine correlation values is defined as the moving direction. In the example shown in FIG. 5D, when the image is shifted in the direction 2, the black portion is the largest, that is, the correlation value is large, so that it is understood that the mouse scanner itself has moved in the direction 7, that is, downward.

Next, in step S7, the moving direction and the moving amount (here, one pixel) detected in step S6, and the partial image of the second image which was not included in the first image are transmitted to the communication element 9 to be transmitted. The data is transmitted to an information processing device such as an external personal computer via the PC. In step S6, the moving direction is the direction 2 shown in FIG. 5C, and it is known that the moving amount is one pixel. Therefore, the partial image of the second image that was not present in the first image is It can be seen that this is the lowermost hatched portion shown in FIG. That is, the image shown in FIG. 5E is output as a partial image.

Next, in step S8, the contents of the primary memory 10 are updated from the first image to the second image. Finally, in step S9, it is determined whether or not the changeover switch 11 has been pressed. If the switch has been pressed, the process returns to step S5 to fetch a new image, sequentially output partial images, and form a scanned image. . On the other hand, if the changeover switch 11 has not been pressed, the process ends in step S10.

When the changeover switch 11 is in the mouse mode, the processing of the above-described steps S1 to S6 is performed, and the normal mouse function of obtaining the moving direction and the moving amount and detecting the position information of the mouse scanner is performed. be able to.

As described above, according to the first embodiment, the position information of the mouse scanner can be detected even when the mouse is not on the mouse pad, and a two-dimensional scanned image can be output at the same time. it can.

In the first embodiment, the case where the moving direction is obtained with respect to the case where the movement amount is shifted by one pixel has been described. However, even if the movement amount is shifted by two pixels or more, the first image is shifted. By setting the direction to two or more pixels, the moving direction can be detected in the same manner as in the case of shifting by one pixel, so that a partial image of the second image, which was not present in the first image, can be transmitted. .

In the first embodiment, the partial image is transmitted to the external information processing apparatus every time an image is captured. However, the configuration shown in FIG. The image and the partial image of the image captured each time are stored in the added memory, and the changeover switch 1
The same effect can be obtained by transmitting the entire scanned image to an external information processing device via the communication element 9 when 1 is no longer pressed.

In the first embodiment, the first image and the second image are correlated as they are in the two-dimensional data for calculating the correlation. Take the projection in the vertical direction, that is, add the pixel values separately in the row direction and the vertical direction and convert it to a one-dimensional vector amount, and then move in any of the vertical and horizontal directions even if the correlation is calculated Can be detected.

Embodiment 2 In the present embodiment, a description will be given of a calculation method in the calculation element 7 which is different from that in the first embodiment. FIG. 6 is a flowchart illustrating the operation of the arithmetic element of the optical mouse scanner according to the second embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 7 is a diagram showing a calculation example of the arithmetic elements of the optical mouse scanner according to the second embodiment of the present invention.

Next, the operation will be described with reference to FIGS. In FIG. 6, up to step S5 is the same as in the first embodiment. In step S21, the difference between the pixel value of the second image (FIG. 7A) and the pixel value of the first image (FIG. 7B) is calculated at each pixel position of the image as shown in FIG. , And a time difference image (FIG. 7C). As shown in FIG. 7C, each pixel indicates a positive pixel value, a hatched portion indicates 0, and a black pixel value indicates a negative pixel value.

Next, in step S22, at each pixel position of the time difference image shown in FIG. 7 (c), a total of eight directions of upward, right, diagonally right up, diagonally left up and the opposite direction are determined. Decide as follows. If the pixel value of the difference image is minus (black), it is determined that there is movement in the direction of the brighter pixel in the second image, and if the pixel value of the difference image is plus (white), it is dark in the first image. Assume that there is movement in the direction of the pixel. Thus, FIG.
As shown in (d), motion vectors in four directions can be calculated for each pixel position.

Next, in step S23, the motion vectors in the eight directions obtained for each pixel position are added as shown in FIG. 7 (e). Further, in step S24, the motion vectors of all the pixels of the entire image are added as shown in FIG. 7 (f), and the direction in which the motion vector is the largest among the eight directions is set as the moving direction of the mouse scanner. However, if the magnitude of the vector in the direction of the largest motion vector obtained in step S24 is equal to or smaller than a certain threshold, it is determined that there is no motion.

In step S25, a partial image of the second image, which is not present in the first image, is obtained from the moving direction detected in step S24, and transmitted to an external information processing apparatus such as a personal computer via the communication element 9. Then, the same processing as in steps S8 to S10 in the first embodiment is performed. As described above, since the moving direction of the mouse scanner is obtained, an image can be scanned in the same manner as in the first embodiment.

In the first and second embodiments, the imaging element 4 and the arithmetic element 7 are separate elements. However, the imaging element 4 and the arithmetic element 7 may be integrated on one semiconductor element. If this is the case, it is possible to reduce the size of the mouse case 5 and reduce the cost of the mouse scanner body.

[0031]

As described above, according to the present invention, a light source for irradiating a subject with light, an imaging lens for condensing reflected light from the subject to form an image, and an image formed by the imaging lens are formed. An image sensor that captures an image, compares a first image captured at a specific time with a second image captured at a time later than the first image, and compares a second image not included in the first image
Since it has an arithmetic element that forms a scanned image by outputting a partial image of the image of the above, the position of the mouse scanner can be detected even when the mouse is not on the mouse pad. There is an effect of obtaining an optical mouse scanner capable of outputting.

Further, since the image pickup element and the arithmetic element are integrated on one semiconductor element, it is possible to reduce the size of the mouse case and reduce the cost of the mouse scanner body.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a longitudinal sectional view showing an optical mouse scanner according to Embodiment 1 of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a top view showing the optical mouse scanner according to the first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing an operation of an arithmetic element of the optical mouse scanner according to the first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing an example of a subject of the optical mouse scanner according to the first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a diagram for explaining the operation of the arithmetic element of the optical mouse scanner according to the first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing an operation of an arithmetic element of the optical mouse scanner according to the second embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 7 is an explanatory diagram showing an operation of an arithmetic element of the optical mouse scanner according to the second embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 8 is a longitudinal sectional view showing a conventional optical mouse.

FIG. 9 is a perspective view showing a conventional attitude control device.

[Explanation of symbols]

Reference Signs List 1 subject, 2 light emitting element, 3 imaging lens, 4 imaging element, 5 mouse case, 7 arithmetic element, 8 prism, 9 communication element, 10 memory, 11 changeover switch, 12 operation switch

Continued on the front page F term (reference) 5B087 AA05 AA09 AB00 BB08 BB21 DJ00 DJ01 5C024 AA01 AA18 EA04 EA06 FA01 HA13 HA18 HA24 5C072 AA01 BA20 CA02 DA02 DA10 EA05 PA02 PA08 RA20 UA13 5F038 DF05 DF20 EZ20

Claims (2)

[Claims] A light source for irradiating a subject with light; an imaging lens for converging reflected light from the subject to form an image; an imaging device for capturing an image formed by the imaging lens;
A first image captured at a specific time is compared with a second image captured at a time later than the first image,
An optical mouse scanner comprising an arithmetic element that forms a scanned image by outputting a partial image of the second image that is not present in the first image. 2. The optical mouse scanner according to claim 1, wherein the imaging device and the arithmetic device are integrated on one semiconductor device.