Classifications

• • G—PHYSICS
  • G06—COMPUTING OR CALCULATING; COUNTING
  • G06V—IMAGE OR VIDEO RECOGNITION OR UNDERSTANDING
  • G06V30/00—Character recognition; Recognising digital ink; Document-oriented image-based pattern recognition
  • G06V30/10—Character recognition
  • G06V30/12—Detection or correction of errors, e.g. by rescanning the pattern
  • G06V30/127—Detection or correction of errors, e.g. by rescanning the pattern with the intervention of an operator
• • G—PHYSICS
  • G06—COMPUTING OR CALCULATING; COUNTING
  • G06V—IMAGE OR VIDEO RECOGNITION OR UNDERSTANDING
  • G06V30/00—Character recognition; Recognising digital ink; Document-oriented image-based pattern recognition
  • G06V30/10—Character recognition
  • G06V30/14—Image acquisition
  • G06V30/142—Image acquisition using hand-held instruments; Constructional details of the instruments
  • G06V30/1423—Image acquisition using hand-held instruments; Constructional details of the instruments the instrument generating sequences of position coordinates corresponding to handwriting
• • G—PHYSICS
  • G06—COMPUTING OR CALCULATING; COUNTING
  • G06V—IMAGE OR VIDEO RECOGNITION OR UNDERSTANDING
  • G06V30/00—Character recognition; Recognising digital ink; Document-oriented image-based pattern recognition
  • G06V30/10—Character recognition

Definitions

• the present invention relates to handwriting recognition apparatus and methods and more particularly, to apparatus and methods for editing handwritten symbols.
• the pen and digitizer pad combination can work particularly well for portable computer systems, such as palmtop computers or cellular phones with integrated personal digital assistant (PDA) functionality, since the arrangement allows a user to hold the portable computer system in one hand while writing onto the digitizer pad with the other hand.
• PDA personal digital assistant
• these pen- based computer systems provide handwriting recognition whereby the user can write on the digitizer pad and the device converts the user's handwritmg into a machine readable format.
• a symbol provided by a user is sensed and compared to a set of known symbols.
• a first one of the known symbols which may correspond to the sensed symbol is selected and displayed to the user.
• a second one of the known symbols which may correspond to the sensed symbol is selected and displayed to the user. In this manner, a user may be provided with an alternative candidate symbol when a displayed symbol does not correspond to a desired symbol.
• the user may be simultaneously provided with a plurality of alternative candidate known symbols from which the user may select a known symbol and substitute it for the first known symbol.
• the first known symbol may be selected as corresponding most closely to the sensed symbol and the second known symbol may be selected as corresponding next most closely to the sensed symbol.
• the first known symbol may be selected by scoring the relative closeness of the sensed symbol to the set of known symbols. The scores may be stored and reused to select the second one of the known symbols.
• apparatus, methods, and computer program products may be provided that facilitate editing of symbols provided by a user, such as symbols which are handwritten by a user.
• FIG. 1 illustrates a wireless mobile terminal including a pen and digitizer pad according to some embodiments of the present invention.
• FIG. 2 illustrates a block diagram of a symbol recognition and display circuit in the wireless mobile terminal of FIG.1 according to some embodiments of the present invention.
• FIG. 3 illustrates operations of the symbol recognition and display circuit of FIG. 2 according to some embodiments of the present invention.
• FIG. 4 illustrates editing operations for a symbol recognition and display circuit according to some embodiments of the present invention.
• FIG. 5 illustrates editing operations for a symbol recognition and display circuit according to other embodiments of the present invention.
• FIGs. 1 -5 are diagrams illustrating exemplary apparatus and operations according to embodiments of the present invention. It will be understood that operations depicted in the diagrams, and combinations thereof, may be implemented using one or more electronic circuits, such as circuits included in a component of a computer interface which uses handwriting or other symbol recognition.
• the computer program instructions may also be embodied in the form of a computer program product in a computer-readable storage medium, i.e., as computer-readable program code embodied in the medium for use by or in connection with an instruction execution system.
• the computer-readable storage medium may include, but is not limited to, electronic, magnetic, optical or other storage media, such as a magnetic or optical disk or an integrated circuit memory device. Accordingly, FIGs. 1-5 support electronic circuits and other apparatus that perform the specified operations, acts for performing the specified operations, and computer program products configured to perform the specified operations.
• a wireless mobile terminal 10 can include a pen 20, a touch sensitive display 30, a pointer stick 40, and switches 50.
• a user can write symbols with the pen 20 on the touch sensitive display 30.
• Written symbols are digitized and symbol recognition is performed on each digitized symbol to select a known symbol that is displayed to the user on the display 30.
• the touch sensitive display 30 can be divided between a symbol input area and a symbol display area or a combined area for input and display may be provided.
• a symbol input area can have separate areas in which individual symbols are written or a continuous symbol area in which a string of symbols can be written. Strings of symbols may be recognized together by the terminal 10 or first parsed into separate symbols and then recognized individually. Design and operation of a wireless mobile terminal as described in this paragraph is well known to those having skill in the art and will not be described further herein.
• FIG. 2 illustrates a symbol recognition and display circuit according to some embodiments of the present invention.
• FIG. 3 illustrates a flowchart of the operations for receiving, recognizing, and displaying written symbols on, for example, the touch sensitive display 30 according to some embodiments of the present invention or another computer interface.
• the symbol recognition circuit Upon power-up or activation of the symbol recognition circuit at Block 300, the symbol recognition circuit waits for a symbol to be written on a symbol input area of a touch sensitive display, such as the touch sensitive display 30 of FIG. 1.
• a written symbol is digitized by an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) 200 and passed to a touch processor 210.
• the touch processor 210 at Block 320, compares the digitized written symbol to a predetermined list of known symbols in a symbol memory 220 to identify a known symbol that may correspond to the digitized written symbol.
• Such symbol recognition may be performed using well known conventional symbol recognition algorithms. In some embodiments, the comparison may be made to identify the known symbols which most closely correspond to the digitized written symbol.
• the predetermined list of known symbols can represent any defined symbols, including a portion or all of a written alphabet, graphical representations of objects, or user-defined symbols.
• a score is generated by the comparison which represents the closeness of the match. Tied scores may be resolved, for example, by selecting among the corresponding symbols based upon their relative position within the list of known symbols or based upon their relative frequency of use.
• the digitized written symbol and the score from the comparison with the known symbol are stored. In some embodiments, they may be stored by the touch processor 210 in the memory 220.
• the comparing and storing, Blocks 320 and 330 are repeated though a loop of Blocks 340 and 350 until the digitized written symbol has been sequentially compared to all, or a portion, of the list of known symbols.
• the stored scores may be a plurality of the highest scores or the scores that exceed a predetermined absolute threshold value. When the comparison and storing is completed, the highest score may indicate which one of the known symbols matched the digitized written symbol most closely.
• the known symbol having the highest score is displayed.
• that known symbol may be passed to a display processor 230, stored in a display memory 240, converted by a digital-to- analog converter (DAC) 250 to an analog signal and displayed on the touch sensitive display 30 to the user.
• the known symbol can also be passed to a host computer, such as a host computer 260 illustrated in FIG. 2, for further processing.
• a user may decide that one or more of the displayed symbols do not correctly match the desired written symbol.
• Editing a displayed symbol is shown in FIG. 4.
• a user can use the pen 20 to touch a symbol on the display 30 and cause it to be edited.
• a user can select a displayed symbol for editing by navigating among the displayed symbols using the pointer stick 40 (by applying pressure in a column or row direction relative to the displayed symbols or by rotational inputs to scroll through displayed symbols), switches 50, or a combination thereof.
• a user may also select a displayed symbol by navigating a cursor or other indicia among displayed symbols and pausing for at least a predetermined time on a desired one of the symbols.
• a start-editing loop illustrated by Blocks 400 and 410 is exited, and the selected symbol is visually modified, at Block 420, to indication to the user that the symbol has been selected for editing.
• the selected symbol may be visually modified by, for example, providing a graphical highlight to the symbol, an underscore, reversing the color of the symbol and its background, or flashing the symbol.
• Block 450 retrieves from memory the next closest known symbol to the selected displayed symbol (next highest scored symbol) and passes the next closest known symbol for display at Block 460, such as by the display processor 230 on the display 30, in place of the selected displayed symbol.
• next closest known symbol can be identified by comparing the digitized written symbol corresponding to the selected displayed symbol, and stored in memory 220, with each of the known symbols, also stored in memory 220, to identify the next closest known symbol.
• the scores developed for each comparison of the digitized written symbol to the known symbols need not be saved and stored in the memory 220 for each displayed symbol, such as was described for Block 330 of FIG. 3.
• the user provides another change symbol command and the operations illustrated by Blocks 440-460 are repeated.
• the user can either cancel the mode by providing a predetermined command or allow the operations to timeout at Block 430. In this manner, incorrect displayed symbols may be efficiently replaced with a known symbol which correctly corresponds to the user's desired written symbol.
• FIG. 5 editing a displayed symbol according to other embodiments of the present invention is shown.
• a user selects a symbol for editing, a list of next closest known symbols is displayed and the user can select from among the list.
• the operations begin by waiting at Blocks 500 and 510 for a displayed symbol to be selected.
• the operations by which a user may select a displayed symbol can include those described for Block 410 in FIG. 4.
• a selected symbol may be visually modified at Block 520.
• the user can cancel the editing or allow it to timeout, at Block 530, or can provide a change symbol command at block 540 to indicate a desire to see alternative next closest symbols to the selected symbol.
• a plurality of the next closest known symbols to the digitized written symbol are retrieved at Block 550 and displayed at Block 560.
• the operations at Block 550 of identifying a list of next closest symbols can be similar to that described for Block 450 of FIG. 4 to select a single closest known symbol.
• the user can cancel the editing command or allow a timeout, at Block 570, to leave the selected displayed symbol unchanged or can select one of the displayed list of next closest known symbols, Block 580, to cause the known symbol selected from the list to be substituted for display in the place of the symbol selected for editing, at Block 590.
• the symbol recognition circuits and operations have been described with regard to the mobile terminal 10, it will be appreciated to one skilled in the art that they may be embodied in any handwriting recognition apparatus such as those used in user interfaces for computer systems, portable computers, and personal digital assistants (PDA).
• the handwritmg interface may be integrated with the display, such as with a touch sensitive display, or may be separate from the display, such as a writing pad that digitizes pen movements.

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• Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
• Computer Vision & Pattern Recognition (AREA)
• Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
• General Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
• Multimedia (AREA)
• Theoretical Computer Science (AREA)
• Character Discrimination (AREA)
• User Interface Of Digital Computer (AREA)

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Publications (1)

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Family Applications (1)

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Citations (3)

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• 2002
  • 2002-05-31 US US10/160,600 patent/US20030223640A1/en not_active Abandoned
• 2003
  • 2003-05-29 JP JP2004509874A patent/JP2005528705A/ja active Pending
  • 2003-05-29 CN CNB038121697A patent/CN100375109C/zh not_active Expired - Fee Related
  • 2003-05-29 EP EP03734241A patent/EP1509874A1/en not_active Withdrawn
  • 2003-05-29 WO PCT/US2003/016848 patent/WO2003102862A1/en not_active Ceased
  • 2003-05-29 AU AU2003238778A patent/AU2003238778A1/en not_active Abandoned

Patent Citations (3)

Non-Patent Citations (1)

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