JPH05314079A - Compact business card manager - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To provide the low-priced compact business card manager with high operability by storing business card information excepting for personal names and company names as image information, performing retrieval by using the personal names and the company names, and outputting the other information concerning business cards as images. CONSTITUTION:A key input part 102 is a part to exchange information between the compact business card manager and users, and the users operate the compact business card manager through this key input part 102. According to instructions inputted from the users, the compact business card manager performs the registration and correction of business card information stored in a data storage part 107, when the instruction shows the retrieval, the information in the data storage part 107 is retrieved by a retrieval part 106, and the business card information is displayed on a display part 103. Further, this compact business card manager is provided with an image input part 101, character segmenting part 104, character recognition part 105 and item judge part 108 or the like. Thus, the input of the business card information conventionally performed at the key input part 102 can be automated at high speed.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a small business card management device which manages information printed on business cards in a database.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In a conventional business card management device, information entered on a business card, for example, a company name, a person's name, an address, etc., is manually entered into a database. Such a business card management device is a product which is more focused on the search of business card information than the input of business card information, and the excellent search function has been evaluated as a product. Therefore, it is very troublesome to input the business card information. In addition, a product that uses a character recognition technology for the business card manager to reduce the time and effort required for input has also been developed, but this product also requires a computer capable of high-speed calculations as an information processing device as a host, It is a type of product.

A portable small-sized business card management device is also considered, but this small-sized business card management device also performs processing using a conventional computer-based character recognition technique.

[0004]

However, since this small business card management device is intended to realize the processing such as recognition and data management which has been conventionally processed by a computer or the like with a small and inexpensive device, It takes a lot of time. Further, in order to realize high-speed processing, the content of the processing has to be deleted, and the reliability of the device tends to be lost. Further, since the business card information is converted into a character code regardless of whether it is a large business card management device or a small business card management device, the information becomes uniform information and the individuality of the business card is lost. Further, when exchanging business cards, there is information other than business card information, and such information cannot be managed.

Therefore, the present invention solves such a problem, and an object thereof is to provide a small-sized business card management device which can manage information without damaging the information on the business card and which is easy to operate and inexpensive. To do.

[0006]

The present invention provides at least the following:
It has a business card supply unit that can store multiple business cards and a business card discharge unit that can store multiple business cards.Enter the business card information as an image and automatically recognize the characters in the input image, In a small business card management device that has a means for converting to a database and storing it in a database, business card information other than personal names and company names is stored as image information, the personal name and company name are used for retrieval, and other information related to business cards is output as an image. It is characterized by doing.

Further, the small business card management device of the present invention has at least a tablet and an optical image input means, and when additional information exists for the business card information input and recognized by the optical image input means, It is characterized in that it has means for manually inputting that information into a tablet and managing it together with business card information, and it is characterized in that the information inputted by the tablet is converted into a character code by a handwritten character recognition means and stored. Further, it is characterized in that the information input by the tablet is stored as chain code information, expanded at the time of output, and output as image information.

[0008]

【Example】

(Example 1) Hereinafter, the present invention will be described in detail based on examples.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a small business card manager according to the present invention. 2 is an explanatory view of the small business card manager of the present invention, and FIG. 3 is a flowchart of the small business card manager of the present invention.

The small business card manager of the present invention is basically shown in FIG.
The block diagram is as shown in, and each block has the following functions. The key input unit 102 is a part for exchanging information between the small business card management device and a person, and the person operates the small business card management device via the key input unit 102. The small business card manager registers and corrects the business card information stored in the data storage unit 107 in accordance with a command input by a person. When the command is a search, the search unit 106 causes the data storage unit 107 The information is searched and the business card information is displayed on the display unit 103. Further, the small business card management device of the present invention has an image input unit 101, a character cutout unit 104, a character recognition unit 105, and an item determination unit 108. As a result, it becomes possible to automate the work of inputting business card information, which was conventionally performed in the key input unit 102, at high speed.

Next, the structure of the small business card management device of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to FIG. As shown in FIG. 2, the small business card management device of the present invention is a business card supply unit 20 capable of storing a plurality of business cards 208 on the back surface of the small business card management device 200.
1 and a business card ejection unit 202 capable of accumulating a plurality of business cards 209 that have been read. Further, a business card supply control spring 219 is present in the business card supply unit 201 so that business cards can be accurately supplied one by one. When the roller 220 rotates, the business card of the business card supply unit 201 is sent to the business card discharge unit 202. At that time, the business card 213 passes through the front surface of the sensor 205, which is an image input unit, and the image information of the business card is read.

Next, a series of operations of the small business card management device of the present invention will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG. The small business card manager of the present invention turns on the switch A and first determines B whether the key 216 is pressed. If the key 216 is not pressed at all, then the small business card manager 200
D for determining whether or not there is a business card in the business card supply unit 201 on the back surface of D. If there is no business card in the business card supply unit 201, it is next determined whether or not the switch is in the OFF state E. If the switch is in the OFF state, the power is turned off and the process is terminated. If the switch is not in the OFF state, the process returns to the determination B of whether the key 216 is pressed again, and the key 21 is pressed until the switch is turned OFF.
The determination B of the state 6 and the determination D of the presence / absence of a business card in the business card supply unit 201 are repeated.

If the key 216 is pressed midway, the command generated by the key input is processed and the process returns to the main routine. Here, the command generated by the key input is the data processing C such as the search, correction, and addition of the business card information stored in the data storage unit 107 of the small business card management device.

Next, in the judgment D of whether or not there is a business card in the business card supply unit 201 on the back surface of the small business card management unit, when it is judged that a business card exists, the image of the business card 208 is detected by the sensor 205. The reading of F is started. Also,
When a key 216 is pressed while an image is being input by the sensor 205 and a command is issued, the small business card management device of the present invention interrupts the reading F of the image and processes the command.

Next, the image input unit 101 recognizes the image information read in the data storage unit 107. For the recognition, a character is cut out from the input image data by the character cutout unit 104 G. The item determination unit 108 determines the item of the business card image for the character cut out here (H). The item determination unit 108 estimates which item of the business card information the cut-out character belongs to by using information such as the size, position, and number of characters of the character. As a result, the item most likely to be a company name and the item most likely to be a person's name are determined, and the character recognizing unit 105 encodes the respective characters I. Further, with respect to the coded characters, it is again confirmed whether the item estimated by the item determination unit 108 is correct, J. If it is determined that the item is correct, the data is registered. If it is determined that the recognized result is different from the corresponding item, the item estimation is repeated based on the cut out information.

Next, the items of the company name and personal name recognized as described above are compared with the data stored in the data storage unit 107 to determine whether the same business card exists or not. In the case of a business card, M performs registration. If the same business card already exists, the recognition of the image information is terminated without performing registration.

As a result, it is not necessary to recognize all the characters of the business card image input from the image input unit 101, and high speed processing is possible. Further, since the personal name and the company name are stored as character codes and other information such as a telephone number is stored in the data storage unit 107 as image information, it is possible to retrieve any data of a necessary business card.

(Embodiment 2) Further, as shown in FIG. 5, the business card manager of the present invention has an LCD panel 501 which is a display unit.
A tablet 502 is provided at the same place as, and a memo can be input from this tablet as needed. A block diagram of the business card management device of the present invention is as shown in FIG.

The image input unit 401, the key input unit 402, the display unit 403, the character cutout unit 404, and the character recognition unit 40.
5, the search unit 406, the data storage unit 407, and the item determination unit 408 have the same functions as the small business card management device described in the first embodiment. The small business card management device of the present invention has a handwritten character input unit 409 and a handwritten character processing unit 410 in addition to the above functions. Generally, a business card includes seven items such as company name, affiliation, job title, name, address, telephone number, and fax number. However, when actually exchanging business cards, there is often a demand for inputting memo information such as the subject, the characteristics of the other party, and the date. In such a case, the handwritten character input unit 409 inputs information by handwriting. The information input by handwriting is processed by the handwritten character processing unit 410 and stored in the data storage unit together with the business card image information. As a result, when the business card is searched at a later date, the memo information is also output together, which facilitates recall of the memory.

(Embodiment 3) A handwritten character recognition technique is used as the handwritten character processing unit 410 for processing the memo information shown in the second embodiment. As a result, the data entered in the memo is 1
The data capacity of 2 bytes per character is now required. In addition, since it is converted into a character code by the handwritten character recognition technology, it becomes possible to search memo writing information, and when the company name, personal name, etc. do not come to mind, it becomes possible to search by entering the matter. As a result, it has become possible to provide a small business card management device capable of managing a large amount of information with a small amount of data and capable of high-speed data processing.

(Embodiment 4) A method of processing handwritten character data as chain code information as the handwritten character processing unit 410 for processing memo information shown in the second embodiment and expanding the chain code at the time of output is used. As a result, the time required for processing handwritten character data is only the time required for character input.

Further, since the input data is replaced with the chain code, it becomes possible to accurately reproduce the character data, and there is no fear of missing information. Further, because of chain coding, the data storage capacity is about 10 bytes per character on average, which is much smaller than the case where the image is stored as it is. As a result, it has become possible to provide an inexpensive small business card management device.

[0023]

As described above, the small business card management device of the present invention extracts and recognizes only the items belonging to the company name and the personal name from the input business card image, stores them in the storage device as code information, and other information. Is stored as the image information in the storage device as it is, and the image information is displayed as it is when the data is searched. Therefore, there is no fear of deleting the company-specific information written on the business card. Further, since only the company name and the person's name are recognized, it is possible to reduce the time required for the recognition process, which is the most time-consuming process of the small business card management device. Moreover, since the number of recognitions is small, the number of erroneous recognitions is reduced, and the reliability of the device is improved.

Also, since it has a tablet and can input information such as memo writing by handwriting and convert it into a small amount of data by a technique such as handwritten character recognition and chain coding, it can be obtained when exchanging business cards. It is possible to retrieve information etc. not written on the business card. As a result, it becomes possible to easily remember the business card exchange requirement and to provide a very convenient small business card management device.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a small business card management device of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram of a small business card management device of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart of the small business card management device of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram of a small business card management device of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram of a small business card management device of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 101, 401 ... Image input section 102, 402 ... Key input section 103, 403 ... Display section 104, 404 ... Character cutout section 105, 405 ... Character recognition section 106, 406 ... Search unit 107, 407 ... Data storage unit 108, 408 ... Item determination unit 409 ... Handwritten character input unit 410 ... Handwritten character processing unit 200.・ ・ Small business card manager 201 ・ ・ ・ ・ Business card supply unit 202 ・ ・ ・ ・ Business card discharge unit 205 ・ ・ ・ ・ ・ ・ Sensor 208 ・ ・ ・ ・ ・ ・ Business card 213 ・ ・ ・・ ・ ・ Business card 216 ・ ・ ・ ・ ・ Key 219 ・ ・ ・ ・ ・ Feed control unit 220 ・ ・ ・ ・ ・ Roller 501 ・ ・ ・ ・ ・ LCD panel 502 ・ ・ ・ ・ ・··Tablet

Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. A business card supply unit capable of storing a plurality of business cards and a business card discharge unit capable of storing a plurality of business cards, wherein information of business cards is input as an image, In a small business card management device that has means for automatically recognizing characters, converting them into codes, and converting them into a database, business card information other than personal names and company names is stored as image information, and personal names and company names are used for retrieval. A small business card manager that outputs other information as an image. 2. When at least a tablet and an optical image input unit are provided, and additional information exists for the business card information input and recognized by the optical image input unit, the additional information is handwritten input to the tablet, A small business card management device having means for managing business card information together. 3. A small business card management device, characterized in that the information input by the tablet according to claim 2 is converted into a character code by a handwritten character recognition means and stored. 4. The information input by the tablet according to claim 2 is stored as chain code information,
A small business card management device that is expanded at the time of output and output as image information.