JP2016007775A - Image formation device, control method of the same, and control program - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a hand-held image formation device which protects safety of a human body regardless of kinds of inks used therein.SOLUTION: A handy mobile printer 100 includes: a position detection sensor 103 which recognizes a current relative position on a recording medium as a current position; and an ink jet head 101 which discharges an ink corresponding to the current position. The handy mobile printer 100 includes: a scanner 400 which obtains an image of a surface of the recording medium; and an infrared sensor 401 which obtains a temperature of the recording medium. The handy mobile printer 100 determines the possibility of discharge of the ink from the image of the surface of the recording medium and the temperature of the recording medium to control the ink jet head 101.

Description

  The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, a control method thereof, and a control program, and more particularly to a small and portable hand-held image forming apparatus, a control method thereof, and a control program.

  Recently, due to the downsizing of notebook PCs and the rapid spread of smart devices, also referred to as Sumadeva, downsizing and portability of printers has been cited as one of the great demands. A handy mobile printer has already been commercialized as a portable printer, and its form can be printed while scanning the paper surface freehand with a human hand.

  About the printing method in these handy mobile printers, the coordinates of the handy mobile printer body are detected by the sensor, and printing is performed by ejecting ink only when the handy mobile printer reaches the position where ink is ejected within the printing range. A method for printing only in a range is already known.

  However, conventional handy mobile printers can detect coordinates by a sensor and print only in the print range, but cannot recognize the material of the print medium. Therefore, there is a risk of accidentally ejecting ink that may adversely affect the human body because it is not possible to determine when it should be ejected or when it should not be ejected, ensuring safety for the human body There was a problem that I could not.

  Patent Document 1 describes a hand-held inkjet printer intended to print images on the surface of various print media regardless of the size of the image to be printed. Among them, for example, a configuration of a hand-held ink jet printer that performs printing with ink that is harmless to the human body is disclosed. This enables printing on the human body.

  The invention described in Patent Document 1 makes it possible to eject ink safely to the human body. However, an ink that is harmless even when applied to the human body and harmless even when used for food, is more expensive to achieve the same print quality as compared with the case of using normal ink. Therefore, when printing is performed on other than the human body, unless ink is exchanged, ink that is harmless to the human body is used, and there is a problem that the cost of the ink increases.

  An object of the present invention is to provide a hand-held image forming apparatus capable of protecting the safety of the human body regardless of the type of ink used.

  An image forming apparatus of the present invention is a hand-held image having a current position recognition unit that recognizes a current relative position on a recording medium as a current position, and an ink discharge unit that discharges ink corresponding to the current position. A forming apparatus comprising: at least one detection unit that detects a characteristic of a recording medium; a determination unit that determines whether ink can be ejected based on the characteristic; and the ink discharge unit according to a determination result by the determination unit. Control means for controlling.

  According to the present invention, it is possible to provide a hand-held image forming apparatus that can protect the safety of the human body regardless of the type of ink used.

It is a bottom view which shows the structure of Embodiment 1 of the handy mobile printer of this invention. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of a handy mobile printer according to a first embodiment of the present invention. FIG. It is a figure which shows operation | movement of the determination means of Embodiment 1 of the handy mobile printer of this invention. It is a flowchart figure which shows the 1st operation | movement of Embodiment 1 of the handy mobile printer of this invention. It is a flowchart figure which shows the 2nd operation | movement of Embodiment 1 of the handy mobile printer of this invention. It is a bottom view which shows the 1st structure of Embodiment 2 of the handy mobile printer of this invention. It is a bottom view which shows operation | movement of Embodiment 2 of the handy mobile printer of this invention. It is a bottom view which shows the 2nd structure of Embodiment 2 of the handy mobile printer of this invention. It is a bottom view which shows the 3rd structure of Embodiment 2 of the handy mobile printer of this invention. It is a flowchart figure which shows operation | movement of Embodiment 2 of the handy mobile printer of this invention. It is a bottom view which shows the structure of Embodiment 3 of the handy mobile printer of this invention. It is a flowchart figure which shows operation | movement of Embodiment 3 of the handy mobile printer of this invention. It is a bottom view which shows the structure of Embodiment 4 of the handy mobile printer of this invention. It is a flowchart figure which shows operation | movement of Embodiment 4 of the handy mobile printer of this invention. It is a bottom view of the conventional handy mobile printer. It is a top view of the conventional handy mobile printer. It is a block diagram of the conventional handy mobile printer.

<Conventional Handheld Image Forming Apparatus>
In the following description of the embodiments, a handy mobile printer that is a hand-held image forming apparatus will be described as an example. First, the configuration of a conventional handy mobile printer will be described with reference to FIGS. FIG. 15 is a diagram showing a surface in contact with a recording medium of a conventional handy mobile printer, that is, a bottom surface.

  As shown in FIG. 15, the handy mobile printer 100 includes an inkjet head 101 that is an ink ejection unit, and detects a relative position on a recording medium by two or more position detection sensors 103 that are current position recognition units. It has become. Specifically, the X axis and Y axis coordinates and the rotation angle are detected as the current position.

  As the position detection sensor 103, for example, an optical sensor used in a mouse or the like may be used. Each corner on the bottom of the handy mobile printer 100 is provided with a plurality of rollers 102 so that it can be easily moved on the recording medium.

  FIG. 16 shows an upper surface which is a side not in contact with a recording medium of a conventional handy mobile printer. As shown in FIG. 16, the handy mobile printer 100 includes a display 201 on the upper surface, and can provide various information to the user. For example, it is possible to display the current operation status such as printing, maintenance, printing preparation completion, ink remaining amount, battery remaining amount, error, and the like.

  In addition, there are one or more input buttons 202 for providing input from the user, which are realized by any device such as a switch or a keyboard. For example, a QWERTY keyboard, keypad, touch screen, cursor direction keys, etc. may be used.

  When the handy mobile printer 100 having the above configuration is moved by the user's own hand and the handy mobile printer 100 detects that the handy mobile printer 100 has moved to a printing position, the ink jet head 101 ejects ink corresponding to the current position. It has become.

  Since it is moved by the user's own hand, the movement in the main scanning direction and the sub-scanning direction is not constant as in the case of the serial ink jet printer, so the direction of movement from a certain point may be any one of 360 degrees. Further, since the paper type such as the size and shape of the recording medium is not defined, it is possible to print on recording media of various materials that are not limited to paper.

  FIG. 17 is a block diagram showing the configuration of a conventional handy mobile printer. As shown in FIG. 17, the handy mobile printer 100 includes a host I / F 304 for performing data communication with a PC and a smart device. In addition, a card I / F 305 for performing data communication with a memory card, a communication I / F 306 for performing data communication with a handy mobile printer, a PC, and a smart device, and a control unit 300 are provided.

  The control unit 300 also includes a CPU 301 that processes data signals, and a ROM 302 that stores firmware for controlling the hardware of the printer, printhead drive waveform data, and the like. Furthermore, it has RAM303 which stores the command, data, etc. which CPU301 performs, and the head drive circuit 307 which produces | generates the data processing for driving an inkjet head, and a drive waveform.

  The above configuration includes functions necessary for exchanging information necessary for printing, such as position detection of handy mobile printers and transmission / reception of data. However, since the function of discriminating the material of the recording medium is not included, there is a risk that ink that may adversely affect the human body is accidentally discharged to the human body. Therefore, in Embodiments 1 to 3 of the present invention, a function for recognizing a recording medium is added to the above configuration.

  Here, the human body is, for example, skin, nails, hair, and the like. In the case of ejecting ink onto the human body, in addition to the face print described above, it is also considered to print a specific small pattern and character on the human body. For example, printing of instant tattoo on the skin and printing of nail art on the nail or hair dyeing.

<Embodiment 1>
A first embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to FIGS. FIG. 1 shows a hardware configuration of the handy mobile printer according to the first embodiment of the present invention viewed from the bottom. 1, in addition to the configuration of the conventional handy mobile printer shown in FIG. 15, a scanner 400 as a surface image acquisition unit and a passive infrared sensor 401 as a temperature detection unit are provided.

  Both the scanner 400 and the infrared sensor 401 function as detection means, the scanner 400 acquires an image of the human body, and the infrared sensor 401 detects the body temperature of the human body. In the first embodiment, it is assumed that the ink to be ejected is an ink that may adversely affect the human body.

  The passive infrared sensor 401 can detect the human body temperature by measuring the amount of infrared rays emitted from the human body. Therefore, when a temperature in the vicinity of 36.5 ° C., which is the average human body temperature, is detected, it may be determined by the determination means that ink is to be discharged onto the human body, and the discharge may be stopped.

  The infrared sensor 401 is installed so that infrared rays from the ink ejection direction are included in the measurement range. Moreover, you may set freely the range of the upper limit and lower limit of the temperature determined to be a human body.

  On the other hand, the scanner 400 can acquire an image of a recording medium. Therefore, when the image is read by the scanner 400 with the image of the part of the human body by the determination unit and is determined to be a human body, the ejection may be stopped.

  As shown in FIG. 2, the characteristics of the recording medium detected by the scanner 400 and the infrared sensor 401 serving as detection means are transmitted to the control unit 300. Based on this result, the control unit 300 determines whether or not the recording medium is a human body by the above-described determination unit, and when it is determined that the recording medium is a human body, the control unit stops the ejection of ink from the inkjet head 101.

  Specifically, the determination unit and the control unit are a determination program and a control program, respectively, and these programs may be stored in the ROM 302 and executed by the CPU 301.

  One example of a method for determining whether an image read by the scanner 400 is a human body will be specifically described. One of the image comparison methods is an existing template matching method.

  In the method using template matching, first, as shown in FIG. 3, a plurality of images representing human skin and the like are stored in advance in the ROM 302 or the like as a template 700. In addition, the image serving as the template 700 may be saved by scanning the human body before printing.

  Thereafter, the scan image 701 acquired by the scanner 400 is scanned using each of the images of the template 700, and the similarity is determined. As the algorithm, for example, SAD (Sum of Absolute Difference), SSD (Sum of Squared Difference), or the like may be used. For example, in FIG. 3, the similarity between the image 702 and the scanned image 701 in the template 700 is determined.

  In addition, by registering a pattern other than the human body, a restriction on prohibition of ejection may be imposed on other than the human body. If the similarity obtained by image comparison is equal to or greater than a certain value, the human body is determined. The degree of similarity determined to be a human body may also be set freely.

  The scanner 400 is arranged so as to surround the inkjet head 101. Therefore, even when the handy mobile printer is scanned in all directions of 360 degrees, the recording medium passes under the scanner 400 before being ejected by the inkjet head 101. If the temperature in the ink ejection direction can be detected by the infrared sensor 401, the arrangement of each module and the number of scanners 400 and infrared sensors 401 are arbitrary.

  Further, it is desirable that the scanner 400 be arranged as close to the inkjet head 101 as possible. The function of the infrared sensor 401 or the scanner 400 may be turned off depending on the situation, such as when productivity is required rather than safety. In that case, the function may not be turned off unless a warning is displayed to the user using the display 201 or a correct password is input.

  FIG. 4 is a flowchart illustrating an example of the operation of the first embodiment. In the operation example shown in FIG. 4, it is determined whether or not printing is performed on the human body before and during printing by the handy mobile printer, and it is determined that either the infrared sensor 401 or the scanner 400 is ejecting to the human body. If so, ink ejection is stopped.

  As shown in FIG. 4, first, initial settings such as start-up of each device in each handy mobile printer 100 are performed (step S101). Next, before starting printing, the infrared sensor 401 measures the infrared rays from the ink ejection direction and detects the temperature (step S102).

  When the temperature within the temperature range set here is measured (step S103, Yes), printing is stopped (step S109). When a temperature outside the set temperature range is measured (No at Step S103), an image is acquired by the scanner 400 (Step S104) and image comparison is performed (Step S105).

  If an image having a set similarity or higher is acquired by the scanner 400 (Yes in step S106), printing is stopped (step S109). When it is not determined that the printing is stopped from the two points of the temperature and the image (step S106, No), the printing is executed (step S107). If the printing is not finished (No at Step S108), the temperature and image are acquired again at the new printing position (Step S102, etc.).

  FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing another example of the operation of the first embodiment. In the operation example shown in FIG. 5, unlike the operation example shown in FIG. 4, the discharge is not stopped unless the values set for both the temperature and the image are satisfied. That is, the similarity between the image and the template is equal to or higher than the set value (step 103, Yes), and if the temperature is included in the set range (step 106, Yes), printing is stopped (step S109).

  The following example can be considered as a method for determining whether or not ink can be ejected by the determining means. For example, when the recording medium is not a human body but has a temperature equivalent to that of a human body, or when the recording medium has an appearance similar to that of a human skin, there is a possibility that printing will be stopped by something other than the human body. In that case, by stopping printing only when the values set in both the temperature and the image are satisfied, the false detection can be reduced although the safety is lowered.

  That is, in the case where a plurality of detection means are provided, when at least one detection means detects a feature that it can be determined that ink cannot be discharged, as shown in FIG. 4, ink is not discharged. Therefore, it can be set as the structure which attached importance to safety.

  Similarly, in the case where a plurality of detection means are provided, as shown in FIG. 5, the ink is not discharged only when a feature that can be determined that ink cannot be discharged from all the detection means is detected. By doing so, it is possible to obtain a configuration in which productivity is emphasized. In this case, it can be paraphrased that ink is discharged when at least one detection unit detects a feature that can be determined to be able to discharge ink.

<Embodiment 2>
A second embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to FIGS. FIG. 6 shows a hardware configuration of the handy mobile printer according to the second embodiment of the present invention viewed from the bottom.

  6, the configuration of the handy mobile printer of the first embodiment shown in FIG. 1 is omitted from the two vertical scanners 400 as viewed from the inkjet head 101. In FIG. In the second embodiment, it is assumed that the ink to be ejected is an ink that may adversely affect the human body.

  In the second embodiment, as in the first embodiment, only ink that may adversely affect the human body is installed in the handy mobile printer 100. The difference from the first embodiment is that the scanner 400 is not arranged so as to surround the inkjet head 101.

  Therefore, when printing while detecting a human body, the scanning direction is limited to the direction in which the scanner 400 is located. Instead, the number of mounted scanners 400 is smaller than that of the first embodiment, which is advantageous in that it can be realized at a low cost. The arrangement of the scanner 400 may be any of the arrangement of only the left and right as shown in FIG. 6, the arrangement of only the upper and lower sides, the arrangement of either the left and right, the arrangement of either of the upper and lower sides.

  The movable scanning angle is determined by the arrangement of the inkjet head 101 and the scanner 400. Since the handy mobile printer 100 can detect the position coordinates using the two position detection sensors 103 as shown in FIG. 7, it is possible to detect the rotation angle θ1001 and the moving direction of the handy mobile printer 100 itself.

  As shown in FIGS. 8 and 9, angles θ1002 and 1003 formed by connecting the corners of the inkjet head 101 and the corners of the scanner 400 are moved from the current position of the handy mobile printer 100 while detecting the human body. It is a possible angle. Therefore, when performing human body detection by the scanner 400, if the scanning direction is not within the angle θ1002 or 1003, it may be controlled not to discharge.

  FIG. 10 is a flowchart showing the operation of the second embodiment. In the flowchart shown in FIG. 10, compared with the flowchart of the first embodiment shown in FIG. 4, a step (step S201) for determining whether the scanning direction is appropriate is added.

  As described with reference to FIGS. 8 and 9 and the like, the scanable direction is determined in advance by the arrangement of the scanner 400 and the inkjet head 101. When scanning is performed in a direction outside the operable range (step S201, No), printing is not performed because the scanner 400 cannot scan before the inkjet head 101 passes through the recording medium (step S109).

<Embodiment 3>
The third embodiment will be described with reference to FIGS. 11 and 12. Unlike the first and second embodiments, the third embodiment shows a method for mounting safety that is harmless even when ejected onto human skin and ensuring safety to the human body when ejected onto the human body.

  Here, the harmless ink is preferably tasteless and odorless and at least has no unpleasant odor. Furthermore, the thing derived from the natural thing instead of the artificial synthetic | combination material is preferable. For example, safflower pigment, charcoal, black ink, carbon, and the like. Alternatively, various inorganic pigments may be used. Examples of the inorganic pigment include titanium oxide, carbon, iron oxide, silicate, mica and the like.

  The above coloring materials are desirably blended so that they are sufficiently finely granulated and then made into a solvent so that the inkjet nozzles are not clogged. From the viewpoint of safety to the human body, water solubility is preferable, but it is not limited thereto if there is no particular danger.

  Ink that is harmless even if it is ejected onto the human skin is safe when ink is ejected onto the human body, but safety is guaranteed if ink is ejected into the human eyes, nose, ears, and mouth. Refers to ink that is not. For example, the goal is to ensure safety for the human body when face prints are performed by Olympic supporters.

  In the third embodiment, as shown in FIG. 11, since the ink is harmless unless it is ejected into human eyes, nose, ears, and mouth, the infrared sensor 401 and the scanner 400 are not provided. In order to detect human eyes, nose, ears, and mouth, a camera 402 is newly provided in the third embodiment.

  In order to acquire an image while printing, the camera 402 needs to have a close-up shooting function. Similar to Embodiments 1 and 2, detection of human eyes, nose, ears, and mouth is performed by a method based on image comparison by setting similarity for determination.

  FIG. 12 is a flowchart showing the operation of the third embodiment. Compared with FIG. 5 showing the operation of the first embodiment, there is a difference in that there is no step for detecting temperature and making a determination based on temperature. In FIG. 12, image comparison (step S302) is performed using images acquired by the camera 402 (step S301).

  When the similarity between the acquired image and the template image indicating human eyes, nose, ears, and mouth exceeds the set similarity (step S303), and human eyes, nose, ears, and mouth are detected (step S303, Only Yes) stops printing. Other than that, it is safe for the human body, so it can be printed. Other than that, the contents of the processing are the same as those of the first and second embodiments.

<Embodiment 4>
Embodiment 4 will be described with reference to FIGS. 13 and 14. Unlike the first to third embodiments, the fourth embodiment includes both ink that may adversely affect the human body and ink that is harmless to the human body. However, ink that is harmless to the human body does not guarantee safety when ink is ejected into the human eye, nose, ear, or mouth. A method of ensuring safety to the human body in this case will be described.

  In the fourth embodiment, in the “human body printing mode” in which printing is performed on the human body, the camera 402 is used to detect human eyes, nose, ears, and mouth as described in the third embodiment. The ink ejected at this time is harmless to the human body. On the other hand, in the “non-human body printing mode” in which printing is performed on other than the human body, the human body is detected by the scanner 400 and the infrared sensor 401 as in the first embodiment.

  The ink used at this time is an ink that may adversely affect the human body. A plurality of inkjet heads 101 are provided, and ink is ejected from separate inkjet heads 101 in each mode.

  Note that the inkjet head 101 that discharges ink that is harmless to the human body does not necessarily need to be surrounded by the scanner 400. The mode switching may be performed when the determination is switched to a human body or a non-human body based on the determination result of the infrared sensor 401 or the scanner 400, or may be performed manually by the user by pressing the input button 202.

  FIG. 14 is a flowchart showing the operation of the fourth embodiment. First, it is determined whether the current mode is “human body printing mode” or “non-human body printing mode” (step S401). Based on the determination result, either human body print mode processing (step S402) or non-human body print mode processing (step S403) is performed.

  Specifically, these processes are the same as the operations after step S301 in FIG. 12 showing the operation of the third embodiment if the human body print mode process, and if the non-human body print mode process, the first embodiment. 4 may be the same as the operation after step S102 in FIG.

  The processing in the non-human body printing mode is not particularly limited to the operation shown in FIG. 4 as long as the operation is the same as that in the first and second embodiments, and the mode determination is performed again when printing is stopped. May be performed.

  The above-described embodiment is a preferred embodiment of the present invention, and the present invention is not limited to the above-described embodiment alone, and various modifications are made without departing from the gist of the present invention. Implementation is possible.

  For example, the scanner 400 may be substituted by the camera 402 in the first embodiment, and conversely, the camera 402 may be substituted by the scanner 400 in the third embodiment. Although a scanner, a camera, and an infrared sensor are cited as means for detecting the characteristics of the human body, the present invention is not limited to these.

  For example, the humidity of the surface may be different between paper and the human body, so a humidity sensor or the like may be used. Moreover, these means may be used alone or in combination.

  In the first to fourth embodiments, it is determined whether or not the recording medium is a human body, but the present invention can also be applied to other recording media. For example, if paper is placed on a table and you want to print only on paper, prepare a template image that represents the paper and print only on paper using the image determination method described above. It is also possible.

  Further, the CPU 301 executes a program installed in the ROM 302 as a control program for the handy mobile printer, so that the operation of the first to fourth embodiments may be executed as a control process by the handy mobile printer.

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 100 Handy mobile printer 101 Inkjet head 102 Roller 103 Position detection sensor 201 Display 202 Input button 300 Control part 301 CPU
302 ROM
303 RAM
304 Host I / F
305 Card I / F
306 Communication I / F
307 Head drive circuit 400 Scanner 401 Infrared sensor 402 Camera

JP 2004-106339 A

Claims (10)

Current position recognition means for recognizing the current relative position on the recording medium as the current position;
An ink ejection means for ejecting ink corresponding to the current position, and a hand-held image forming apparatus,
At least one detection means for detecting characteristics of the recording medium;
From the above characteristics, determination means for determining whether ink can be discharged;
An image forming apparatus comprising: a control unit that controls the ink discharge unit according to a determination result by the determination unit.   The image forming apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the determination unit determines whether the recording medium is a human body from the characteristics, and determines whether ink can be ejected.   3. The image forming apparatus according to claim 1, wherein at least one of the detection means is a temperature detection means for detecting a temperature of the recording medium. A template image showing the characteristics of the recording medium to be detected;
And at least one surface image acquisition means for acquiring an image of the surface of the recording medium,
The at least one of the detection means is an image similarity detection means for detecting the similarity by comparing the template image and the image on the surface. 2. The image forming apparatus according to item 1.   The image forming apparatus according to claim 4, wherein the template image shows at least one of human eyes, nose, ears, and mouth.   The image forming apparatus according to claim 5, wherein the surface image acquisition unit is disposed so as to surround the ink discharge unit.   7. The method according to claim 1, wherein the determination unit determines that the ink cannot be discharged when it can be determined that the ink cannot be discharged from the feature detected by at least one of the detection units. The image forming apparatus described in the item.   7. The method according to claim 1, wherein the determination unit determines that ink can be discharged when it can be determined that ink can be discharged from the feature detected by at least one of the detection units. The image forming apparatus described in the item. A current position recognition step for recognizing the current relative position on the recording medium as the current position;
A detecting step for detecting characteristics of the recording medium;
From the above characteristics, a determination step for determining whether or not ink can be ejected;
And a control step of controlling the ink discharge means of the image forming apparatus according to the determination result of the determination step.   A control program for causing an image forming apparatus to execute control processing by the control method according to claim 9.

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