JPS5845743B2 - information processing system - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention provides an information processing system that uses a computer or the like to consistently and automatically input, process, and output information, and to minimize the effort required to create input information. At the same time, it relates to the configuration of an information processing system that aims to maximize the effectiveness of using output results.

Automation or labor saving of information input in information processing systems has long been considered an essential requirement for the development of information processing application fields, and optical character readers (OCR), mark readers, or magnetic Devices such as printed character readers have been developed and put into practical use.

Each of these automatic information input devices is effective and widely used in its intended field, but they account for less than a few percent of the total information processing system, and their fields of use are limited. This is only a small portion.

As mentioned above, one of the reasons why the above-mentioned automatic information input devices are not necessarily widely used is that the tasks that can be processed by the automatic information input device in a particular information processing system must be processed by the information processing system. This is thought to be because the proportion of the work involved is small and there are not many cases where it can produce a large effect as a result.

Also, even though it is an automatic information input device, it cannot completely process the input information it handles; for example, in an optical character reading device, 0.
1 f, f, or 0.01% are usually misread or unreadable, and for these characters that cannot be read correctly, preset rules (parity, It is possible to process all the input information only by using a combination of methods such as detecting the characters using a computer (such as Runznaek), displaying unreadable characters as images on a display device, and manually correcting them.

Furthermore, optical character reading devices for the purpose of automatic character information input can process all types of characters.
For example, the current situation is that we have no idea how to read handwritten kanji.

As exemplified above, the reason why conventional technologies, especially automatic information input devices, are not necessarily sufficiently popularized and used is that the range that automatic information input devices can process is often limited to only a part of the input information; This is thought to be because in many cases, the rate at which processing systems can be automated and labor-saving is not necessarily large.

The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned state of the prior art, and it is not always necessary to convert and process all of the input information of the information processing system into internal information of the information processing system, and the input information Only a part of it is identified and recognized and converted and processed into internal information of the information processing system, and this result and part or all of the input information, including the part that was not identified or recognized, is used as mere image information for the above-mentioned identification and recognition.
An object of the present invention is to provide an information processing system configuration that dramatically increases the applicable fields of an automatic information input device and, by extension, an information processing system including the automatic information input device, by displaying or printing the information in association with recognized input information. purpose.

In order to achieve the above object, the information processing system of the present invention increases the automation ratio of the entire system, and at the same time
The basic idea is to ensure ease of use from the user's perspective.
There is an image section that outputs the input information as is, or after only performing auxiliary processing for convenience such as display and printing, and an image section that outputs the input information as it is or after performing auxiliary processing for convenience such as display and printing, and an image section that outputs the input information as it is or after performing various processing after being recognized by a recognition device and then controlling the output of the image section. It is characterized in that the processing is divided into processing information parts that are output in association with the image part.

Furthermore, another feature of the information processing system of the present invention is that input information is processed on the assumption that it necessarily includes both the image section and the processing information section.

The information processing system of the present invention divides input information into an image part and a processing information part as described above, performs appropriate processing on each part, and outputs them, thereby using a simple image transmission device or a simple recognition device. It provides a new automatic information processing system that cannot be obtained alone, and provides a dramatic expansion of the fields in which it can be used, great economic effects, and ease of use.

The basic configuration of the information processing system of the present invention will be described based on FIG.

The information processing system of the present invention has a photoelectric conversion unit 11° recognition and
Identification unit 12. Processing unit 13. It is composed of a printing/display section 14 and a storage section 15.

The photoelectric conversion unit 11 is written on a form, microfilm, etc.
Or a known exercise device that converts printed input information into an electrical quantity, or a scanner, etc., which includes at least one photoelectric conversion device and, depending on the application, converts an image area into photoelectricity. and a scanner etc. that photoelectrically converts the processing information.
It may have more than one photoelectric conversion device.

In addition, as a special case, well-known video disc device technology (Philips Technical Re
view, Volume 33 PP, 178193.

It is also possible to use a device that simultaneously photoelectrically converts image information and audio information using, for example, 1973).

The recognition/identification unit 12 has a known pattern recognition function such as the recognition unit of an optical character recognition device, and recognizes and identifies the processing information part in the input information converted into an electrical quantity by the photoelectric conversion unit, and reads the information. Convert to internal code defined by the information processing system.

In addition, if the amount of electricity sent from the photoelectric conversion unit 11 corresponds to the image part in the input information, the recognition/identification unit 12 does not recognize this and performs auxiliary processing for printing/displaying. It is sent to the printing/displaying section 14 through the processing section 13.

The processing unit 13 has a function equivalent to that of a central processing unit in a known computer system, and stores the storage unit 15 as necessary.
Processes the processing information (converted into internal code) sent from the processing information section in the input information through the photoelectric conversion section 11 and the recognition/identification section 12 while referring to the data in the input information, and inputs the processing result. The information is output in association with the image portion of the information to a printing/display section 14 such as a laser printer.

The storage unit 15 may be a high-speed storage device using a core memory, wire, semiconductor, etc. used in a normal computer system, or a collective disk device or the like especially when storing a large amount of image part of input information. Use an external storage device.

Furthermore, the connection section 16 that connects the processing section 13 and the printing/display section 14 may be equivalent to a normal inter-device connection line, but
The printing/display section 14 can also be used as a terminal device by using a communication circuit or the like as necessary.

FIG. 2 is a very simple example of the input information 21 used in the information processing system of the present invention, and the input information 21 is
It consists of a processing information section 22 and an image information section 23.

The information processing system of the present invention reads the processing information part 22 of the input information 21 and converts it into an internal code, and
The image section 23 is photoelectrically converted and sent to the printing/display section 14.

The processing information section 22 converted into the internal code further contains the first
After being processed by the processing unit 13 in the figure and referring to the information stored in the storage unit 15, the print/display unit 14
is output to.

In addition, the processing information section 22 can also be used as control information for selecting the print/display section to be output when there are a plurality of print/display sections 14.

FIG. 3 shows an example of the form in which the input information 21 in FIG. 2 is processed by the information processing system of the present invention and is finally output.
The image portion 23 of 1 is output as is as the image portion 24 of the output information 27, and the output information 27 further includes additional information 25 and 26 obtained by processing the processing information portion 22 of the input information 21.
is output in the form of text or images.

In the embodiment described above, the image areas 23 and 24 can be used, for example, as the address of mail, so that various billing operations can be automatically performed and the address can be written in kanji. By using the system, it is possible to simultaneously automate business processing and improve the efficiency of using processing results.

FIG. 4 shows another embodiment of the information processing system of the present invention, which includes a photoelectric conversion section 482, a paper feeding mechanism 49.
Arithmetic control device 41. Arithmetic device 45° register 44. Special calculation device 46. Input/output control device 42. Storage device 43. Control device 47'j for the photoelectric conversion section 48 and paper feeding mechanism 49
6 and an output device 50 are shown.

This embodiment has a similar configuration to an optical character reader (electronics, handwriting 0CRH-8959).

PP, 1678. December 1973), a scanning photoelectric conversion device similar to a television camera or the like is used as the photoelectric conversion unit 48, and an electrostatic dot printer, a cathode ray tube display device with an image display function, or a facsimile output device is used. By adopting the output device 50 as the output device 50, the purpose of the present invention can be achieved by automatically processing the input information (FIG. 2) including both the image part and the processing information part.
The process of obtaining the output shown in the figure can be performed consistently and automatically.

In an optical character reader using a normal scanning photoelectric conversion section, the unknown character section 22 to be recognized is scanned line by line, and first, the photoelectric conversion section 48 controls the arithmetic and control unit 41 through the register 44 as image information. It is stored in the storage device 43 under .

In addition, at this time, instead of adding some auxiliary processing before or after storing it in the storage device, or storing all the image information equivalent to 22 digits of the processing information section 22, it is possible to By storing only the image information corresponding to the number of minutes, and performing the processing of scanning the processed information 22 with the photoelectric conversion unit 48 and the recognition processing performed using the arithmetic unit 45 etc. in parallel, the storage device 43 mainly stores the image information for recognition. Storing only the processed results can also be done normally.

In the information processing system of the present invention, not only the processing information section 22 in the input information 21 is scanned as is done by the above-mentioned ordinary optical character reader, but also the image section 23 is scanned for photoelectric conversion. The image information obtained by this photoelectric conversion is also stored in the storage device 43.

Next, known character recognition processing is performed on the image information in the storage device 43 corresponding to the processing information section 22, and the recognition results are temporarily stored in the storage device 43 again.

Here, the character recognition process is performed using the arithmetic control device 41, storage device 43, register 44, arithmetic device 45, special arithmetic device 46, etc. that correspond to the recognition/identification section 12.

After the above processing, the recognition/identification results corresponding to the processing information section 22 stored in the storage device 43 are sent to the arithmetic control device 41, the register 44, and the arithmetic device 45, which correspond to the processing section 13 in FIG. Similarly, using the storage device 43 corresponding to the storage section 15 in FIG.
Processing is performed while referring to data stored in advance in 3.

Nao, the processing here refers to the human power information listed in the processing information section 22, the processing section 13, and the storage device 1.
By program and data in 5 is meant any process that obtains output information depending on input information.

In the embodiment shown in FIG. 4 above, for the sake of simplicity,
The photoelectric conversion device corresponding to the photoelectric conversion section 11 in FIG. 1 can be the same for the processing information section 22 and the image section 23, and the recognition and identification section 12 and the processing section 13 in FIG. It is assumed that the arithmetic control unit 41, the register 44, and the arithmetic unit 45 can be used for both, and the storage device 43 in FIG. 4 is used as a part of the recognition/identification unit 12 in FIG. It shall also be used as section 15.

After the above processing, the output information 27 is printed or displayed on the output device 50 corresponding to the printing/display section 14 in FIG.

Like the photoelectric conversion section 48, the output device 50 also outputs the output information 27.
Different printing/display devices may be used for the image portion 24 and additional information portions 25 and 26, or both may be printed out on the same page by using an electrostatic dot printer or the like.

An embodiment of the present invention has been described above in detail.

Although not mentioned in the above explanation, the scanning range for photoelectrically converting the image portion 23 in the input information 21 is made different from the scanning range for photoelectrically converting the processing information portion 22 according to a certain rule. It is clear that changes such as the following can be easily implemented.

f, LK, FIG. 5 generally shows the processing information section 53 and the image section 52 constituting the input information 51 according to the above embodiment, and FIG. 6 similarly shows the contents of the output information 61. , that is, the image section 62 and the additional information section 63 are generally shown.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a basic configuration diagram of the information processing system of the present invention,
FIG. 2 shows an example of input information, and FIG. 3 shows an example of output results. FIG. 4 shows a detailed embodiment, FIG. 5 shows a general example of input information suitable for the detailed embodiment of FIG. 4, and FIG. 6 shows an example of output output by the embodiment of FIG. 4. shows.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. Converting information on a recording medium having both a first information recording section recording characters, numbers, or symbols and a second information recording section recording image information into an electrical signal. a first means for automatically recognizing characters, numbers, or symbols in the first information recording section and converting them into code information; Based on the code information or the result of the processing, at least one of the characters, numbers, symbols, and images that are different from the characters, numbers, and symbols in the first information recording section is a third means for generating third information including a third information; and at least a part of the third information includes information corresponding to the image information recorded in the second information recording section and the third information. An information processing system comprising: fourth means for synthesizing and outputting. 2 In the system described in paragraph 1, a numerical number is recorded in the first information recording section of the recording medium, a handwritten address and name are recorded in the second information recording section, and the third means An information processing system, characterized in that characters or images corresponding to the numbers in the first information recording section are generated, and a fourth means outputs a document in which the characters or images are combined with the handwritten address and name. 3. The information processing system according to item 1, wherein the fourth means includes means for performing predetermined processing on the second information recording section.