JPH03161887A - Optical character reader - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To improve the degree of freedom of reading by comparing the size of a measured sheet with the size set up by a size setting means and deciding the size and reading direction of the sheet. CONSTITUTION:A sheet size measuring part 7 measures the physically lateral and longitudinal sizes of a read sheet based on image data stored in an image memory 6 and a sheet size deciding part 5 compares the size of the measured sheet with sheet size information in a sheet size table 2. When both sizes coincide with each other, a sheet size deciding part 5 decides that the reading direction of the sheet read out by a scanner part 8 is the positive direction. When the measured lateral size coincides with the longitudinal size in the table 2 and the measured longitudinal size coincides with the lateral size in the table 2, the reading direction of the sheet is decided as a 90 deg.-rotated direction. Consequently, the degree of freedom of reading can be improved.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION OBJECTS OF THE INVENTION (Industrial Field of Application) The present invention relates to an optical character reader (OCR) capable of reading sheet contents of various sizes.

(Prior Art) Conventionally, this type of optical character reading device can read the contents of sheets of different sizes, and the size of the sheet can be identified based on the difference in the width direction of the sheet. For this reason,
The only direction in which a sheet can be inserted into an optical character reading device is the forward direction in which the lateral direction of the sheet is parallel to the line sensor of the scanner. Further, even if the sheets have different vertical sizes, it is not possible to distinguish and read the difference in size between sheets of the same horizontal size. Furthermore, if the horizontal size of the sheet was outside the field of view of the line sensor, the sheet could not be read.

Further, for the above-mentioned reason, it is obvious that a sheet that can be read in the forward direction cannot be rotated 90 degrees and inserted into the optical reading device to be read.

Therefore, even though conventional optical reading devices can read a mixture of sheets of different sizes, their degree of freedom in reading is low and they are difficult to use.

(Problems to be Solved by the Invention) As described above, the conventional optical character reading device can read sheets of different sizes, but since the sheet size is identified only by the difference in the width of the sheet, The drawback was that the degree of freedom when reading mixed sizes was low, making it difficult to use.

Therefore, the present invention eliminates the above-mentioned drawbacks, and it is possible to identify and read not only sheets with different horizontal sizes but also sheets with different vertical sizes. It is an object of the present invention to provide an optical character reading device that has a high degree of freedom in reading and can read even objects rotated by degrees.

[Precepts of invention]

(Means for Solving the Problems) The present invention is an optical system that stores image data obtained by optically scanning a sheet in a memory, and then cuts out and recognizes character data from the image data in the memory. In the character reading recognition device, a size measuring means for measuring the physical vertical/horizontal size of the sheet based on the image data stored in the memory and vertical/horizontal size information of all the sheets to be read are set. size setting means; control information setting means for setting reading control information corresponding to the size and reading direction of the sheet; the size of the sheet measured by the size measuring means and the size set in the size setting means; determining means for determining the size of the sheet and the reading direction of the sheet by comparing the size and the reading direction of the sheet; and a determining means for determining the size of the sheet and the reading direction of the sheet, and a control information setting means set in the control information setting means corresponding to the determination result of the determining means and the determined size and reading direction of the sheet. and character recognition means for cutting out character data from the image information in the memory and recognizing the character data based on reading control information.

(Function) In the optical character reading device of the present invention, the size measuring means measures the physical length/width size of the sheet based on the image data stored in the memory. The vertical/horizontal size information of the sheet is set.The control information setting means sets reading control information corresponding to the size and reading direction of the sheet.The determining means is configured to set the size information of the sheet measured by the size measuring means and the reading control information. The size of the sheet and the reading direction of the sheet are determined by comparing the size with the size set in the size setting means.The character recognition means uses the determination result of the determination means and the determined size and reading direction of the sheet. Character data is cut out from the image information in the memory and recognized based on the reading control information set in the control information setting means corresponding to the character data.

(Example) Hereinafter, an example of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of the optical character reading device of the present invention. 1 is a control unit that controls the operation of the character reading device; 2 is a sheet size table that stores sheet size information given from a higher-level control unit (computer 50); and 3 is a sheet size table that stores sheet size information provided by the upper control unit (computer 50); A character recognition unit that recognizes read characters in the memory 6; 4 is an FC table that stores reading control information (FC) given from the upper control unit 50; 5 is a sheet size table and measurement size information of the read sheet; A sheet size determining unit compares the information in 2, determines the sheet reading direction and sheet size, and further determines the corresponding FC data; 6 stores (memorizes) the image of the entire sheet scanned by the scanner unit 8; An image memory 7 is a sheet size measurement unit 8 that measures the physical horizontal and vertical sizes of the read sheet from the read data in the image memory 6.
is a scanner unit that conveys the sheet and optically scans the surface of the sheet to read image data. Further, 50 is an external host controller (computer, etc.) that performs various data processing based on the character information read by the optical character reading device constituted by 1 to 8 above.

Next, the operation of this embodiment will be explained. First, size information of all sheets to be read and reading control information corresponding to each size are sent to the control unit 1 from the external host control device 50 in advance.
given to. The control unit 1 writes the given sheet size information into the sheet size table 3, and similarly writes the given reading control information into the FC table 4. after that,
When a reading command is issued to the control unit from the higher-level control unit 50, the control unit 1 activates the scanner unit 8 to transport and scan a sheet (not shown). The image data of the collected sheet is stored in the image memory 6.

Next, the sheet size measuring section 7 measures the physical horizontal and vertical sizes of the read sheet based on the image data stored in the image memory 6, and sends the measurement results to the sheet size determining section 5. Next, the sheet size determination unit 5 uses the measured sheet size and the sheet size table 2.
Compare the sheet size information within. At this time, if the measured horizontal size and the horizontal size stored in the sheet size table 2 match, and the measured vertical size and the vertical size in the sheet size table 2 match, the sheet size determination unit 5 It is determined that the reading direction of the sheet read by the scanner unit 8 is the forward direction as shown in FIG. 2 (A>).

Further, if the measured horizontal size and the vertical size in the sheet size table 2 match, and the measured vertical size and the horizontal size in the sheet size 2 match, the sheet size determination section 5 uses the scanner section 8 to read the The reading direction of the sheet is determined to be a direction rotated 90 degrees from the normal direction as shown in FIG. 2(B). The sheet size determination unit 5 sends the reading direction of the sheet determined as described above and the logical image M/width size information to the character recognition unit 3, and also performs reading control corresponding to the sheet length/width size information. Information is read from the FC table 4 and sent to the character recognition section 3. The character recognition section 3 recognizes the read characters in the image memory 6 based on the various information sent from the sheet size determination section 5, and sends the recognition result to the control section 1. The control unit 1 transfers the character recognition result sent from the character recognition unit 3 and the sheet type to the upper control unit 50, and the reading of one sheet is completed.

According to this embodiment, it is determined whether both the ia/width sizes of the scanned sheet match the size of a predetermined standard scanned sheet, and the size of the scanned sheet and the size of the scanned image are determined based on the determination results. Determine the direction of rotation,
Based on this result, character recognition of the read image is performed. Therefore, it is possible to identify not only the difference in the horizontal size of the reading sheet but also the difference in the vertical size and read the contents. Furthermore, not only when the sheet is read in the normal direction, but also when the sheet is read in the direction 9 rotated by 90 degrees with respect to the normal direction, this can be identified and the contents of the sheet can be read. Therefore, the degree of freedom when reading mixed sheet sizes compared with the conventional method is increased, and the handling of the apparatus can be significantly improved.

〔Effect of the invention〕

As described above, according to the optical character reading device of the present invention,
It is possible to identify and read not only sheets with different horizontal sizes, but also sheets with different vertical sizes.
Since the sheet can be read even when the insertion direction of the sheet is rotated 90 degrees from the normal direction, the degree of freedom in reading can be improved.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an example of an optical character reading device according to the present invention, and FIG. 2 is a diagram showing an example of the direction of a read image. Engineering... Control section 2... Sheet size table 3... Character recognition section 4... FC table 5... Sheet size determination section 10 6... Image memory 7... Sheet size measuring section 8 ...Scanner section

Claims (1)

[Claims] In an optical character reading recognition device, image data obtained by optically scanning a sheet is temporarily stored in a memory, and then character data is cut out and recognized from the image data in this memory. size measuring means for measuring the physical length/width size of the sheet based on the image data read, size setting means for setting the length/width size information of all the sheets to be read, and the size and reading direction of the sheet. control information setting means for setting reading control information corresponding to the size of the sheet; and a control information setting means for setting reading control information corresponding to the size of the sheet by comparing the size of the sheet measured by the size measuring means with the size set in the size setting means. determination means for determining the reading direction of the sheet; and read control information set in the control information setting means corresponding to the determination result of the determination means and the determined size and reading direction of the sheet. What is claimed is: 1. An optical character reading device comprising character recognition means for cutting out and recognizing character data from image information.