JP2004294645A - Article-identifying device - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an article identifying device in which convenience is enhanced by automatically changing an inefficient memory state into the efficient one. <P>SOLUTION: The article-identifying device is provided with a storage section and a control section, with the storage section having a speech information storage area, comprising a plurality of areas for storing inputted speech information and a plurality of areas for storing an identifier related to the speech information, and the control section writing the speech information to the storage section. Additionally, the control section has the function of confirming the usage state of the area at the storage section. When the area in use exceeds a prescribed amount, the speech information related to a specific identifier is rewritten to the speech information related to the identifier, that is not the specific identifier for effectively utilizing the storage section, thus achieving convenient article identifying device. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2005,JPO&NCIPI

Description

[0001]
TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to an article identification device having a wireless tag reading function.
[0002]
[Prior art]
In business activities such as distribution and production, technologies that identify goods and provide that information are remarkable in technology evolution and applied technologies, with barcodes at the top, but recognition of goods on an individual basis. Is not enough. In particular, it is not easy for people who are visually impaired or elderly people to identify or learn the contents of the article or its contents.
[0003]
For example, the number of visually impaired people in Japan is said to be about 350,000, and since much of the information that humans obtain from the outside world depends on vision, visually impaired people have many inconveniences and inconveniences in daily life and social life. Have a profit. In addition, it will be difficult for elderly people, who will be increasing more and more in the future, to memorize information on things to be used. Therefore, there is a great social demand for a support system applying IT technology, and various researches are underway.
[0004]
For example, when a visually impaired person lives alone in a home, a wireless tag (hereinafter referred to as a tag that stores information for identifying the article in an article to be identified, in order to provide a means for identifying the article around the user. 2. Description of the Related Art An installation-type article identification device that provides information about an article by attaching a tag attached to the article and bringing the tag attached to the article close to an installation-type tag reader is known (for example, see Patent Document 1). ). In addition, based on the same idea, there is an increasing demand for a portable and easy-to-use portable article identification device that is small and lightweight and can be carried indoors and outdoors as a portable type.
[0005]
[Patent Document 1]
JP 2001-350485 A
[Problems to be solved by the invention]
However, the use of the portable type greatly enhances convenience, and for example, the number of target articles to be identified such as clothes, foods, medicines, music CDs and documents increases, and the number of tags used inevitably increases. As a matter of course, tags are reused, and in particular, tags attached to food or medicine are frequently replaced with other items. In addition, the voice input time may be variable in order to enhance convenience, and the internal memory area for voice information is necessarily inefficiently used. As a result, the apparent memory usage will increase steadily during long periods of use, and eventually tags will not be able to be registered. To enable registration, the user must be forced to perform operations such as erasing unnecessary article information. It becomes very troublesome. Then, in order to solve this inconvenience, there is a request to request that the inefficient memory state be automatically set to an efficient state to further improve convenience.
[0007]
[Means for Solving the Problems]
In order to solve the above problem, an article identification device of the present invention includes a voice information storage area including a plurality of areas for storing input voice information and a plurality of areas for storing identifiers associated with the voice information. A storage unit having an identifier storage area, and a control unit for writing audio information to the storage unit, wherein the control unit has a function of confirming a use state of an area of the storage unit, and is used. If the area exceeds a predetermined amount, audio information associated with a specific identifier is rewritten to audio information associated with an identifier that is not the specific identifier.
[0008]
BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION
Hereinafter, an embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to FIGS.
[0009]
(Embodiment 1)
In FIG. 1, reference numeral 10 denotes a tag (RFID tag or the like) having a unique identifier (hereinafter, referred to as a tag identifier).
[0010]
Further, reference numeral 100 denotes an article identification device capable of reading the tag 10, and includes the following parts. Reference numeral 101 denotes a tag reading unit that reads the tag identifier 1 stored in the tag 10. Since information is generally exchanged between the tag 10 and the article identification device 100 by wireless communication, the tag reading unit 101 generally includes an antenna. Is done. Reference numeral 102 denotes an audio information input unit for inputting audio information after reading the tag 10, and 103 stores audio information input from the audio information input unit 102 in association with the tag identifier 1 of the tag 10. It is a storage unit. Reference numeral 104 denotes a determination unit that determines whether the read tag identifier 1 is an identifier stored in the storage unit 103. Reference numeral 105 denotes voice information associated with the read identifier based on the determination result of the determination unit 104. An audio information reproducing unit 106 to be reproduced indicates a key input unit for operation. The key input unit 106 for operating the article identification device 100 includes a read key 106 a for reading the tag identifier 1 of the tag 10, a registration key 106 b for inputting voice information, and a storage unit 103. It comprises an erase key 106c for erasing stored information and a power key 106d for turning on / off the power of the article identification apparatus 100.
[0011]
The storage unit 103 has a management table area 103a and a voice information area 103b, as shown in FIG. The management table area 103a includes a management table number, an identifier of a tag, address information of the audio information area 103b in which audio information associated with the identifier is stored, and whether or not the audio information is necessary. And a plurality of management tables each including the necessity information indicating the above. Further, the audio information area 103b is an area in which a plurality of audio information stored at the addresses represented by the address information stored in the management table are associated with the identifiers stored in the management table.
[0012]
Further, since the article recognition apparatus 100 is portable, it has a battery 108 as a power source, and has a charging unit 107 for charging the battery 108 using an external charger 109.
[0013]
Here, first, an operation when registering audio information relating to an article in the article identification device 100 will be described with reference to FIG.
[0014]
When the power supply key 106d is pressed to turn on the power of the article identification apparatus 100 and the readout key 106a is pressed in this state, the control unit 110 gives a read command to the tag reading unit 101, and the tag reading unit 101 The tag identifier 1 stored in the tag 10 attached to the article is read. Next, the determination unit 104 compares the read tag identifier 1 with the identifier stored in each management table in the management table area 103a, and if the same identifier exists, the management table is present. The audio information stored in the audio information area 103b is read out based on the address information, and the audio information reproducing unit 105 reproduces the content as audio. On the other hand, when the read tag identifier 1 is not registered, the operator of the article identification apparatus 100 is notified of the fact that the tag identifier 1 is not registered by a buzzer sound (not shown).
[0015]
When the registration key 106b is depressed after reading the tag identifier 1 of the tag 10, the control unit 110 gives an input command to the voice information input unit 102 and stops the voice information input unit 102 from inputting voice information. Change from the state to the state in which audio information can be input. While the registration key 106b is kept pressed, voice information can be input. When the registration key 106b is released, the control unit 110 gives an input stop command to the voice information input unit 102, The voice information input unit 102 is changed from a voice information input enabled state to a voice information input stopped state. Here, when the operator of the article identification apparatus 100 inputs information relating to the article as voice while the registration key 106b is kept pressed, the analog-digital conversion function built in the voice information input unit 102 converts the digital information. Obtain signalized audio information.
[0016]
Next, the control unit 110 passes the acquired tag identifier 1 and the audio information input from the audio information input unit 102 to the determination unit 104. The determination unit 104 searches the storage unit 103, determines whether the tag identifier 1 of the read tag 10 is the tag identifier stored in the storage unit 103, and passes the result to the control unit 110. If there is no matching tag identifier, control unit 110 writes the input audio information at address N + 1 in audio information area 103b next to address N at which the previous writing was performed. Further, the control unit 110 adds a new management table having the identifier information and the address information of the audio information area 103b in which the audio information is stored, to the position of the management table number N + 1 in the management table area 103a. The management table also has necessity information indicating whether or not the management table is necessary. When voice information is newly added, the control unit 110 converts the necessity information into “necessary” which means necessity. ".
[0017]
On the other hand, if the matching identifier exists in the management table in the management table area 103a, as an illustrative example, if the identifier exists in the management table of the management table number 2 (management table 2), the control unit 110 Changes the necessity information in the management table 2 to "unnecessary" meaning unnecessary, and stores the input audio information in the address N + 1 in the audio information area 103b next to the address N in which the previous writing was performed. Write. Further, the control unit 110 adds a new management table having the identifier information and the address information of the audio information area 103b in which the audio information is stored, to the position of the management table number N + 1 in the management table area 103a. Therefore, the audio information corresponding to the address information of the management table in which the necessity information is “unnecessary” exists as it is, and remains in the audio information area 103b as unnecessary data that is not accessed.
[0018]
Here, even if the identifier associated with the newly stored audio information already exists in the management table area 103a, the management table in which the identifier exists is not used, and the reason for the newly added The method of adding the management table described above will be described in comparison with a conventional example.
[0019]
In the conventional method, the registration time of the voice is fixed, for example, within a maximum registration time of 20 seconds, and the maximum number of registrations is also fixed. The merit in this case is that it is only easy for the creator of the device, and may cause inconvenience to the user in a restricted manner. In particular, when it is necessary to insert a long explanation voice, such as in the case of article recognition, it greatly impairs convenience.
[0020]
As another conventional method, the voice is of variable length. However, even when registering a new tag or reusing a tag, a new voice is added to the voice information area as in the present embodiment. Instead, the size of audio information already stored and the size of audio information to be newly stored are compared, and if the size is equal to or smaller than the original size, writing is performed at the same address. On the other hand, if the size of the audio information is large, another empty area is searched for and written or written to a new area. Although this conventional method seems to be efficient at first glance, it requires a comparison of the size of audio information and a search for an empty area as a program, which causes a decrease in the performance of the apparatus. To store audio information smaller than the original size described above means that a difference in size remains as an empty space, so that a useless portion will eventually increase and some sort of memory arrangement will be required. In this case, too, it is expected that extremely complicated memory management is required, and the device will be problematic in the whole.
[0021]
In the article identification device of the present embodiment, as is clear from the comparison with the conventional example described above, writing of the audio information area 103b is simply performed as described above, thereby improving the performance of the device and improving the user's performance. For usability is the primary consideration.
[0022]
Next, an operation of reproducing audio information relating to an article from the article identification apparatus 100 will be described with reference to FIG.
[0023]
When the read key 106b is pressed, the control unit 110 gives a read command to the tag reading unit 101, and reads the tag identifier 1 stored in the tag 10 attached to the article by the tag reading unit 101. More specifically, the radio wave transmitted from the tag reading unit 101 of the article identification device 100 is received by the tag 1, and its own identifier is superimposed on the radio wave and returned to the tag reading unit 101.
[0024]
Next, the acquired tag identifier 1 is transmitted to the determination unit 104 via the control unit 110. The determination unit 104 searches the management table area 103a to determine whether the tag identifier 1 of the read tag 10 matches the stored tag identifier, and passes the result to the control unit 110. If it is determined that there is a matching tag identifier, the control unit 110 reads out the audio information associated with the tag identifier from the audio information area 103b and passes it to the audio information reproduction unit 105, and The digital-to-analog conversion function incorporated in the unit 105 reproduces audio information converted into an analog waveform. On the other hand, if there is no matching tag identifier, the control unit 110 controls the audio information reproducing unit 105 to generate a buzzer sound indicating that no audio information exists by a buzzer (not shown). Notify others.
[0025]
Here, considering the actual use situation of the article identification device in the present embodiment, in addition to newly registering the tag 10 for article identification, the tag 10 attached to consumables such as food and medicine is Frequent reuse is repeated. Under this situation, as shown in FIG. 3, the state of the storage unit 103 is such that the necessity information of the management table has become “unnecessary”, that is, the address of the voice information area 103b shown in this management table. Is left as an unnecessary part. As a result, the apparently used area of the voice information area 103b increases steadily, and the value of the currently used maximum address 103c shown in FIG. 3 increases. The area of the storage unit 103 is naturally limited in size, and if the apparatus is continuously used normally, the currently used maximum address 103c extends outside the area for storing audio information. become unable.
[0026]
Here, a description will be given of an efficient and convenient memory optimization method in the present embodiment.
[0027]
At a timing described later in detail, the control unit 110 searches the management table area 103a shown in FIG. 3 for a management table in which the necessity information is “unnecessary”. In this example, this table corresponds to a management table in which the table of table number 2 is unnecessary (hereinafter, management table 2), and it can be seen from the address information of the management table 2 that the audio information 2 in the audio information area 103b is unnecessary. . Then, the control unit 110 confirms that the voice information 3 subsequent to the voice information 2 is “necessary” indicating that it is necessary, and then moves the valid voice information 3 to the position of the unnecessary voice information 2. . Next, the control unit 110 rewrites the address information of the management table 3 in which the address of the audio information 3 is written with the newly moved address information, and moves the management table 3 to the position of the management table 2. Subsequently, the management table 4 whose necessity information is “necessary” and the corresponding audio information 4 are moved to the positions of the management table 3 and the audio information 3, respectively, and the necessary information is updated. By repeating the above operation, unnecessary information in the voice information area 103b and the management table area 103a is removed, and only valid information is present, and the number of storage areas that can be newly registered is increased. Can be reused.
[0028]
Next, the timing of starting the operation for organizing the storage unit 103 will be described.
As an example, the control unit 110 is provided with a clock function, and when a predetermined time comes, the operation of automatically organizing the storage unit 103 is started. This method is effective when the capacity of the storage unit 103 is relatively small, or when the frequency of reuse of the tag is high, and the method is performed according to a time zone when the article identification apparatus 100 is not used, for example, at night. Good.
[0029]
As another method, the user may grasp the status of the reuse frequency of the tag, or perform a key operation to start organizing the storage unit 103 when the tag cannot be reused. As an example of this key operation, the key operation may be started by turning on the power supply 106d while pressing the erase key 106c, or a new key may be provided exclusively for this function. Alternatively, the voice information reproducing unit 105 may output a voice guidance to notify the operator that the organizing of the storage unit 103 is started or that the storage unit 103 is being rewritten.
[0030]
As another method, there is a method in which the control unit 110 constantly monitors the currently used maximum address 103c of the audio information area 103b shown in FIG. For example, the control unit 110 monitors what percentage of the maximum storage area given to the audio information area 103b by design, and gives a voice guidance when it reaches 75% with a margin, for example. The work of organizing 103 may be started. However, in this method, if the control unit 110 immediately starts the operation of organizing the storage unit 103 when it reaches 75%, playback and registration function operations cannot be performed while the storage unit 103 is being organized. Will lack. Therefore, as a countermeasure, the sorting is started when the article identification device 100 is not used. For example, it is considered that the article identification device 100 is not used at night and the battery is normally connected to the charger 109 and charged at night. Therefore, the control unit 110 determines the use area of the above-described voice information area 103b at the start of the charging or at the timing when the charging unit 109 is placed on the charger 109, and thereafter starts the work of organizing the storage unit 103. By doing so, the convenience of the article identification device 100 can be improved. Note that an installation detection unit (not shown) is provided in the article identification device 100 to detect that the storage unit 103 is placed on the charger 109, and the control unit 110 sorts the storage unit 103 based on a signal from the installation detection unit. Work should be done.
[0031]
Further, the article identification device 100 is provided with a detection unit (not shown) for detecting the movement of the article identification device 100, such as an acceleration sensor, and the control unit 110 controls the article identification device 100 for a predetermined time based on a signal from the detection unit. The control unit 110 may arrange the storage unit 103 when it is determined that the storage unit 103 is placed in the location.
[0032]
The control unit 110 checks the voltage of the battery 108 before charging as a criterion for determining whether or not to start the work of organizing the storage unit 103, and determines that the voltage is equal to or higher than a predetermined value. It is possible to prevent the storage unit 103 from becoming abnormal due to being inadvertently detached from the charger 109 while organizing the storage unit 103 or running out of battery during the organization work. . In particular, it is possible to solve the problem of running out of battery such as when the voice information area 103b is large and it takes a long time to organize the storage unit 103, and this is extremely effective and practical.
[0033]
Regardless of the method, at the time of starting or during the operation of organizing the storage unit 103, the user is notified by a beep sound or voice indicating that the operation has been started or is being arranged. By doing so, the user can recognize that the storage unit 103 is being organized, and it is possible to prevent a complain that the user cannot operate the storage unit 103 during the organization.
[0034]
As described above, according to the present embodiment, while the voice recording time is variable, even when registering a new tag or reusing a tag, it is convenient and sufficiently practical without lowering the performance. An article identification device 100 to be provided can be provided.
[0035]
【The invention's effect】
As described above, according to the present invention, an audio information storage area including a plurality of areas for storing input audio information and an identifier storage area including a plurality of areas for storing identifiers associated with the audio information are provided. And a control unit for writing audio information to the storage unit, wherein the control unit has a function of confirming the use status of the area of the storage unit, and the used area is a predetermined amount. When the number exceeds the threshold, the voice information associated with the specific identifier is rewritten to voice information associated with the identifier that is not the specific identifier, thereby effectively utilizing the storage unit to realize a highly convenient article identification device. Can be.
[Brief description of the drawings]
FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a schematic configuration of an article identification device according to a first embodiment of the present invention; FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating an example of a storage unit according to the embodiment of the present invention; Figure showing an example of the storage unit of [Description of reference numerals]
10 Tag 100 Article identification device 101 Tag reading unit 102 Input unit 103 Storage unit 103a Management table area 103b Voice information area 104 Judgment unit 105 Playback unit 106 Key input unit 106a Read key 106b Registration key 106c Erase key 106d Power key 107 Charging unit 108 Battery 109 Charger

Claims (9)

A storage unit having a voice information storage area including a plurality of areas for storing input voice information and an identifier storage area including a plurality of areas for storing identifiers associated with the voice information; And a control unit for performing writing of the area. The control unit has a function of confirming the use status of the area of the storage unit. When the used area exceeds a predetermined amount, the control unit associates the area with a specific identifier. An article identification device that rewrites the assigned audio information to audio information associated with an identifier other than the specific identifier. The article identification device according to claim 1, wherein the control unit has a clock function and rewrites the voice information at a predetermined time. The article identification device according to claim 1, further comprising a detection unit configured to detect that the audio device has been placed at a predetermined location for a predetermined time, and rewriting audio information based on a signal from the detection unit. A start key for starting rewriting audio information associated with the specific identifier to audio information associated with the identifier that is not the specific identifier; the control unit performs rewriting of the audio information based on a signal from the start key; The article identification device according to any one of claims 1 to 3, which performs the operation. It has a power receiving unit that receives supply of power from the charging stand, and an installation detecting unit that detects that the charging stand is installed, and the control unit rewrites audio information based on a signal from the installation detecting unit. The article identification device according to claim 1. The article identification device according to any one of claims 1 to 5, wherein the specific identifier is an identifier meaning that data associated with the identifier is unnecessary. The article identification device according to claim 1, further comprising an output unit, wherein the output unit outputs information indicating that the voice information is being rewritten while the control unit is rewriting the audio information. A power supply unit for supplying power to each unit in the article identification device, and a measuring unit for measuring the output of the power supply unit, and when the output of the power supply unit is smaller than a predetermined value, rewriting of voice information is disabled. The article identification device according to claim 1. The article identification device according to any one of claims 1 to 7, wherein the control unit rewrites the audio information so that the audio information is arranged in the stored order.

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