WO2006023937A2 - Lecteur portatif - Google Patents

Lecteur portatif Download PDF

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Publication number
WO2006023937A2
WO2006023937A2 PCT/US2005/030007 US2005030007W WO2006023937A2 WO 2006023937 A2 WO2006023937 A2 WO 2006023937A2 US 2005030007 W US2005030007 W US 2005030007W WO 2006023937 A2 WO2006023937 A2 WO 2006023937A2
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WO
WIPO (PCT)
Prior art keywords
text
document
scanner
user
gesture
Prior art date
Application number
PCT/US2005/030007
Other languages
English (en)
Other versions
WO2006023937A3 (fr
Inventor
Martin T. King
Dale L. Grover
Clifford A. Kushler
James Quentin Stafford-Fraser
Original Assignee
Exbiblio B.V.
Priority date (The priority date is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the date listed.)
Filing date
Publication date
Priority claimed from US11/004,637 external-priority patent/US7707039B2/en
Priority claimed from US11/097,093 external-priority patent/US20060041605A1/en
Priority claimed from US11/098,043 external-priority patent/US20060053097A1/en
Priority claimed from US11/097,961 external-priority patent/US20060041484A1/en
Priority claimed from US11/185,908 external-priority patent/US20060104515A1/en
Priority claimed from US11/208,457 external-priority patent/US20060122983A1/en
Priority claimed from US11/208,408 external-priority patent/US20060136629A1/en
Application filed by Exbiblio B.V. filed Critical Exbiblio B.V.
Publication of WO2006023937A2 publication Critical patent/WO2006023937A2/fr
Publication of WO2006023937A3 publication Critical patent/WO2006023937A3/fr

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Classifications

    • G—PHYSICS
    • G06—COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR 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
    • G06V30/26—Techniques for post-processing, e.g. correcting the recognition result
    • G06V30/262—Techniques for post-processing, e.g. correcting the recognition result using context analysis, e.g. lexical, syntactic or semantic context
    • G—PHYSICS
    • G06—COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR 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

  • 60/613,602 filed on September 27, 2004, Application No. 60/613,340 filed on September 27, 2004, Application No. 60/613,634 filed on September 27, 2004, Application No. 60/613,461 filed on September 27, 2004, Application No. 60/613,455 filed on September 27, 2004, Application No. 60/613,460 filed on September 27, 2004, Application No. 60/613,400 filed on September 27, 2004, Application No. 60/613,456 filed on September 27, 2004, Application No. 60/613,341 filed on September 27, 2004, Application No. 60/613,361 filed on September 27, 2004, Application No. 60/613,454 filed on September 27, 2004, Application No. 60/613,339 filed on September 27, 2004, Application No. 60/613,633 filed on September 27, 2004, Application No.
  • 60/615,378 filed on October 1 , 2004, Application No. 60/615,112 filed on October 1 , 2004, Application No. 60/615,538 filed on October 1 , 2004, Application No. 60/617,122 filed on October 7, 2004, Application No. 60/622,906 filed on October 28, 2004, Application No. 60/633,452 filed on December 6, 2004, Application No. 60/633,678 filed on December 6, 2004, Application No. 60/633,486 filed on December 6, 2004, Application No. 60/633,453 filed on December 6, 2004, Application No. 60/634,627 filed on December 9, 2004, Application No. 60/634,739 filed on December 9, 2004, Application No. 60/647,684 filed on January 26, 2005, Application No. 60/648,746 filed on January 31 , 2005, Application No.
  • 60/653,372 filed on February 15, 2005, Application No. 60/653,663 filed on February 16, 2005, Application No. 60/653,669 filed on February 16, 2005, Application No. 60/653,899 filed on February 16, 2005, Application No. 60/653,679 filed on February 16, 2005, Application No. 60/653,847 filed on February 16, 2005, Application No. 60/654,379 filed on February 17, 2005, Application No. 60/654,368 filed on February 18, 2005, Application No. 60/654,326 filed on February 18, 2005, Application No. 60/654,196 filed on February 18, 2005, Application No. 60/655,279 filed on February 22, 2005, Application No. 60/655,280 filed on February 22, 2005, Application No. 60/655,987 filed on February 22, 2005, Application No. 60/655,697 filed on February 22, 2005, Application No. 60/655,281 filed on February 22, 2005, and Application No. 60/657,309 filed on February 28, 2005.
  • the following disclosure relates generally to scanners, and more particularly to handheld scanning devices such as pen scanners.
  • Scanners are well known devices that capture and digitize images of documents. Most scanners are relatively large devices that are used to scan documents a full page at a time. An example of such a scanner is discussed in U.S. Patent 6,678,075.
  • Some handheld scanners start scanning when a button is depressed, and some scan as long as this button is depressed. Some automatically detect that a scan has begun because a sensor near the tip of the scanner is depressed. Some scanners may have integrated flash memory, or an infra-red or USB connection to store data locally on a scanner or remotely on a personal computer. Many scanners have a power switch that may be used to turn on these scanners, and some are able to automatically shut down due to inactivity. Some scanners may only be able to store text. Some are able to capture an image of unrecognized content (e.g. handwriting, mathematical symbols, pictures) if the user touches a button.
  • unrecognized content e.g. handwriting, mathematical symbols, pictures
  • a user may be able to set a switch so the scanner is better able to interpret what it is scanning (e.g. setting a language character set).
  • Some scanners may be controlled with a separate user interface on a personal computer, and then having to synchronize the scanner with this computer.
  • these scanners do not allow a user to control functionality or results with methods other than activating a button or switch or some sort. A user is not able to make use of the intuitive gestures to users using an actual pen.
  • Some devices intend to allow a person to scan a document and then determine which characters have been scanned. While many of these devices are given form factors reminiscent of pens, they are often intended primarily to convert printed text to an electronic form.
  • One goal of some embodiments of this invention is to allow users to enjoy the benefits of scanning text by annotating it.
  • Figure 1 is a data flow diagram that illustrates the flow of information in one embodiment of the core system.
  • Figure 2 is a component diagram of components included in a typical implementation of the system in the context of a typical operating environment.
  • Figure 3 is a block diagram of an embodiment of a scanner.
  • Figure 4 is a block diagram showing typical components of a scanner.
  • Figure 5 is a block diagram showing alternate typical components of a scanner.
  • Figure 6 is a block diagram showing alternate typical components of a scanner.
  • Figure 7 is a light-processing diagram showing the operation of a typical optics configuration of the scanner.
  • Figure 8 is a schematic diagram showing switches incorporated in the scanner in some embodiments.
  • Figure 9 is a schematic diagram showing a visual output component incorporated into the scanner in some embodiments in a first state.
  • Figure 10 is a schematic diagram showing a visual output component incorporated into the scanner in some embodiments in a second state.
  • Figure 11 is a flow diagram showing steps typically performed by the system to monitor a scan for completeness.
  • Figure 12 is a flow diagram showing steps typically performed by the system in order to perform symbolic compression.
  • Figure 13 is a state diagram showing the evolving state of the symbolic compression process while processing a scan capturing the word "determinative.”
  • Figure 14 is a flow diagram showing steps typically performed by the system to determine character offsets within an image captured during a scan.
  • Figure 15 is a convolution diagram showing one way to visualize the character offset determination process.
  • Figure 16 is a further convolution diagram.
  • Figure 17 is a flow diagram showing steps typically performed by the system in order to record subsegmented segments.
  • Figure 18 is a flow diagram showing steps typically performed by the system in order to recognize "combination gestures" that are performed by performing a series of constituent gestures.
  • Figure 19 is a flow diagram showing steps typically performed by the system to detect a backwards motion.
  • Figure 20 is a gesture diagram showing samples to detect that a user has made a circle gesture.
  • Figure 21 is a gesture diagram showing sample attempts at performing a circle gesture.
  • Figure 22 is a flow diagram showing steps typically performed by the system to detect a rubbing gesture.
  • Figure 23 is a schematic diagram showing a first point in an example of the performance of the backward slash scanning gesture.
  • Figure 24 is a schematic diagram showing a second point in an example of the performance of the backward slash scanning gesture.
  • Figure 25 is a schematic diagram showing a third point in an example of the performance of the backward slash scanning gesture.
  • a device for interacting with rendered documents includes a scanner and memory is described.
  • the device can include a small, stand-alone scanning device, or it may include at least part of another device, such as at least part of a pen-style device, at least part of a mouse, at least part of a cell phone, at least part of a remote control, or at least part of a personal digital assistant, among numerous possibilities.
  • the device can include one or more means to establish communication with at least one of a separate computing device or a network, and can be used both when such communication is currently established (“on-line”) and also in the absence of any such established communication (“off-line").
  • Information from rendered documents is scanned to the memory, and a user of the device is signaled when sufficient information has been obtained to determine at least one action associated with the scanned information.
  • the user may be signaled when sufficient information has been obtained to determine at least one document comprising the scanned information, or the user may be signaled when enough information has been has been obtained to determine a commerce operation, an annotation, a format operation, or identifying an advertisement.
  • Determining when sufficient information has been obtained may involve ascertaining a type or types of the scanned symbols, counts or relative positions of the scanned symbols of various types, an overall number of scanned symbols, a number of scanned words, a count of stop and non-stop words or symbols, or the frequency of occurrence of words or symbols of various types, among other things.
  • the methods used for making such a determination may differ depending on whether the device is on-line or off-line.
  • Scan context information may be stored in association with the scanned information in the memory.
  • the scan context information may facilitate determination of an action or actions using or otherwise involving the scanned information.
  • the scanned information may be transferred to at least one of the separate computing device or the network, for further processing and to carry out actions using or involving the scanned information.
  • Instances of scanned information may be accumulated in a repository for the user, and may be distinguished according to numerous criteria, including, for example, whether the instance was collected on-line or off-line, whether the system has presented the user with one or more possible actions that may be associated with the instance, and whether the user has indicated one or more actions to be performed with respect to the instance.
  • the system uses a sample of text captured from a paper document, for example using a handheld scanner, to identify and locate an electronic counterpart of the document.
  • the amount of text needed by the system is very small in that a few words of text from a document can often function as an identifier for the paper document and as a link to its electronic counterpart.
  • the system may use those few words to identify not only the document, but also a location within the document.
  • paper/digital integration without requiring changes to the current processes of writing, printing and publishing documents, giving such conventional rendered documents a whole new layer of digital functionality.
  • a typical use of the system begins with using an optical scanner to scan text from a paper document, but it is important to note that other methods of capture from other types of document are equally applicable.
  • the system is therefore sometimes described as scanning or capturing text from a rendered document, where those terms are defined as follows:
  • a rendered document is a printed document or a document shown on a display or monitor. It is a document that is perceptible to a human, whether in permanent form or on a transitory display.
  • Scanning or capturing is the process of systematic examination to obtain information from a rendered document.
  • the process may involve optical capture using a scanner or camera (for example a camera in a cellphone), or it may involve reading aloud from the document into an audio capture device or typing it on a keypad or keyboard.
  • a scanner or camera for example a camera in a cellphone
  • This section describes some of the devices, processes and systems that constitute a system for paper/digital integration.
  • the system builds a wide variety of services and applications on this underlying core that provides the basic functionality.
  • Figure 1 is a data flow diagram that illustrates the flow of information in one embodiment of the core system. Other embodiments may not use all of the stages or elements illustrated here, while some will use many more.
  • Text from a rendered document is captured 100, typically in optical form by an optical scanner or audio form by a voice recorder, and this image or sound data is then processed 102, for example to remove artifacts of the capture process or to improve the signal-to-noise ratio.
  • a recognition process 104 such as OCR, speech recognition, or autocorrelation then converts the data into a signature, comprised in some embodiments of text, text offsets, or other symbols.
  • the system performs an alternate form of extracting document signature from the rendered document.
  • the signature represents a set of possible text transcriptions in some embodiments. This process may be influenced by feedback from other stages, for example, if the search process and context analysis 110 have identified some candidate documents from which the capture may originate, thus narrowing the possible interpretations of the original capture.
  • a post-processing 106 stage may take the output of the recognition process and filter it or perform such other operations upon it as may be useful. Depending upon the embodiment implemented, it may be possible at this stage to deduce some direct actions 107 to be taken immediately without reference to the later stages, such as where a phrase or symbol has been captured which contains sufficient information in itself to convey the user's intent. In these cases no digital counterpart document need be referenced, or even known to the system. [0053] Typically, however, the next stage will be to construct a query 108 or a set of queries for use in searching. Some aspects of the query construction may depend on the search process used and so cannot be performed until the next stage, but there will typically be some operations, such as the removal of obviously misrecognized or irrelevant characters, which can be performed in advance.
  • the query or queries are then passed to the search and context analysis stage 110.
  • the system optionally attempts to identify the document from which the original data was captured.
  • the system typically uses search indices and search engines 112, knowledge about the user 114 and knowledge about the user's context or the context in which the capture occurred 116.
  • Search engine 112 may employ and/or index information specifically about rendered documents, about their digital counterpart documents, and about documents that have a web (internet) presence). It may write to, as well as read from, many of these sources and, as has been mentioned, it may feed information into other stages of the process, for example by giving the recognition system 104 information about the language, font, rendering and likely next words based on its knowledge of the candidate documents.
  • the next stage will be to retrieve 120 a copy of the document or documents that have been identified.
  • the sources of the documents 124 may be directly accessible, for example from a local filing system or database or a web server, or they may need to be contacted via some access service 122 which might enforce authentication, security or payment or may provide other services such as conversion of the document into a desired format.
  • marksup may be associated with, and apply to, a rendered document and/or the digital counterpart to a rendered document, or to groups of either or both of these documents.
  • actions may be taken 140. These may be default actions such as simply recording the information found, they may be dependent on the data or document, or they may be derived from the markup analysis. Sometimes the action will simply be to pass the data to another system. In some cases the various possible actions appropriate to a capture at a specific point in a rendered document will be presented to the user as a menu on an associated display, for example on a local display 332, on a computer display 212 or a mobile phone or PDA display 216. If the user doesn't respond to the menu, the default actions can be taken.
  • FIG. 2 is a component diagram of components included in a typical implementation of the system in the context of a typical operating environment.
  • the operating environment includes one or more optical scanning capture devices 202 or voice capture devices 204.
  • Each capture device is able to communicate with other parts of the system such as a computer 212 and a mobile station 216 (e.g., a mobile phone or PDA) using either a direct wired or wireless connection, or through the network 220, with which it can communicate using a wired or wireless connection, the latter typically involving a wireless base station 214.
  • the capture device is integrated in the mobile station, and optionally shares some of the audio and/or optical components used in the device for voice communications and picture-taking.
  • Computer 212 may include a memory containing computer executable instructions for processing an order from scanning devices 202 and 204.
  • an order can include an identifier (such as a serial number of the scanning device 202/204 or an identifier that partially or uniquely identifies the user of the scanner), scanning context information (e.g., time of scan, location of scan, etc.) and/or scanned information (such as a text string) that is used to uniquely identify the document being scanned.
  • the operating environment may include more or less components.
  • search engines 232 Also available on the network 220 are search engines 232, document sources 234, user account services 236, markup services 238 and other network services 239.
  • the network 220 may be a corporate intranet, the public Internet, a mobile phone network or some other network, or any interconnection of the above.
  • the devices may all be operable in accordance with well-known commercial transaction and communication protocols (e.g., Internet Protocol (IP)).
  • IP Internet Protocol
  • the functions and capabilities of scanning device 202, computer 212, and mobile station 216 may be wholly or partially integrated into one device.
  • scanning device, computer, and mobile station can refer to the same device depending upon whether the device incorporates functions or capabilities of the scanning device 202, computer 212 and mobile station 216.
  • some or all of the functions of the search engines 232, document sources 234, user account services 236, markup services 238 and other network services 239 may be implemented on any of the devices and/or other devices not shown.
  • the capture device may capture text using an optical scanner that captures image data from the rendered document, or using an audio recording device that captures a user's spoken reading of the text, or other methods. Some embodiments of the capture device may also capture images, graphical symbols and icons, etc., including machine readable codes such as barcodes.
  • the device may be exceedingly simple, consisting of little more than the transducer, some storage, and a data interface, relying on other functionality residing elsewhere in the system, or it may be a more full-featured device. For illustration, this section describes a device based around an optical scanner and with a reasonable number of features.
  • Scanners are well known devices that capture and digitize images. An offshoot of the photocopier industry, the first scanners were relatively large devices that captured an entire document page at once. Recently, portable optical scanners have been introduced in convenient form factors, such as a pen-shaped handheld device. [0064] In some embodiments, the portable scanner is used to scan text, graphics, or symbols from rendered documents. The portable scanner has a scanning element that captures text, symbols, graphics, etc, from rendered documents. In addition to documents that have been printed on paper, in some embodiments, rendered documents include documents that have been displayed on a screen such as a CRT monitor or LCD display.
  • FIG. 3 is a block diagram of an embodiment of a scanner 302.
  • the scanner 302 comprises an optical scanning head 308 to scan information from rendered documents and convert it to machine-compatible data, and an optical path 306, typically a lens, an aperture or an image conduit to convey the image from the rendered document to the scanning head.
  • the scanning head 308 may incorporate a Charge-Coupled Device (CCD), a Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) imaging device, or an optical sensor of another type.
  • CCD Charge-Coupled Device
  • CMOS Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor
  • a microphone 310 and associated circuitry convert the sound of the environment (including spoken words) into machine-compatible signals, and other input facilities exist in the form of buttons, scroll-wheels or other tactile sensors such as touch-pads 314.
  • Feedback to the user is possible through a visual display or indicator lights 332, through a loudspeaker or other audio transducer 334 and through a vibrate module 336.
  • the scanner 302 comprises logic 326 to interact with the various other components, possibly processing the received signals into different formats and/or interpretations.
  • Logic 326 may be operable to read and write data and program instructions stored in associated storage 330 such as RAM, ROM, flash, or other suitable memory. It may read a time signal from the clock unit 328.
  • the scanner 302 also includes an interface 316 to communicate scanned information and other signals to a network and/or an associated computing device.
  • the scanner 302 may have an on-board power supply 332.
  • the scanner 302 may be powered from a tethered connection to another device, such as a Universal Serial Bus (USB) connection.
  • USB Universal Serial Bus
  • a reader may scan some text from a newspaper article with scanner 302. The text is scanned as a bit-mapped image via the scanning head 308.
  • Logic 326 causes the bit-mapped image to be stored in memory 330 with an associated time-stamp read from the clock unit 328.
  • Logic 326 may also perform optical character recognition (OCR) or other post-scan processing on the bit-mapped image to convert it to text.
  • OCR optical character recognition
  • Logic 326 may optionally extract a signature from the image, for example by performing a convolution-like process to locate repeating occurrences of characters, symbols or objects, and determine the distance or number of other characters, symbols, or objects between these repeated elements.
  • the reader may then upload the bit-mapped image (or text or other signature, if post-scan processing has been performed by logic 326) to an associated computer via interface 316.
  • a reader may capture some text from an article as an audio file by using microphone 310 as an acoustic capture port.
  • Logic 326 causes audio file to be stored in memory 328.
  • Logic 326 may also perform voice recognition or other post-scan processing on the audio file to convert it to text.
  • the reader may then upload the audio file (or text produced by post-scan processing performed by logic 326) to an associated computer via interface 316.
  • End-to-end feedback can be applied by performing an approximation of the recognition or interpretation, identifying a set of one or more candidate matching documents, and then using information from the possible matches in the candidate documents to further refine or restrict the recognition or interpretation.
  • Candidate documents can be weighted according to their probable relevance (for example, based on then number of other users who have scanned in these documents, or their popularity on the Internet), and these weights can be applied in this iterative recognition process.
  • the selective power of a search query based on a few words is greatly enhanced when the relative positions of these words are known, only a small amount of text need be captured for the system to identify the text's location in a corpus.
  • the input text will be a contiguous sequence of words, such as a short phrase.
  • the system can identify the location in that document and can take action based on this knowledge.
  • the system may also employ other methods of discovering the document and location, such as by using watermarks or other special markings on the rendered document.
  • search query In addition to the captured text, other factors (i.e., information about user identity, profile, and context) may form part of the search query, such as the time of the capture, the identity and geographical location of the user, knowledge of the user's habits and recent activities, etc. [0078] The document identity and other information related to previous captures, especially if they were quite recent, may form part of a search query.
  • the identity of the user may be determined from a unique identifier associated with a capturing device, and/or biometric or other supplemental information (speech patterns, fingerprints, etc.).
  • the search query can be constructed taking into account the types of errors likely to occur in the particular capture method used.
  • One example of this is an indication of suspected errors in the recognition of specific characters; in this instance a search engine may treat these characters as wildcards, or assign them a lower priority.
  • the capturing device may not be in communication with the search engine or corpus at the time of the data capture. For this reason, information helpful to the offline use of the device may be downloaded to the device in advance, or to some entity with which the device can communicate. In some cases, all or a substantial part of an index associated with a corpus may be downloaded. This topic is discussed further in Section 15.3.
  • the queries may be saved and transmitted to the rest of the system at such a time as communication is restored.
  • multiple queries may be launched in response to a single capture, either in sequence or in parallel.
  • queries may be sent in response to a single capture, for example as new words are added to the capture, or to query multiple search engines in parallel.
  • the system sends queries to a special index for the current document, to a search engine on a local machine, to a search engine on the corporate network, and to remote search engines on the Internet.
  • the response to a given query may indicate that other pending queries are superfluous; these may be cancelled before completion.
  • search engine that handles traditional online queries also to handle those originating from rendered documents.
  • Conventional search engines may be enhanced or modified in a number of ways to make them more suitable for use with the described system.
  • the search engine and/or other components of the system may create and maintain indices that have different or extra features.
  • the system may modify an incoming paper-originated query or change the way the query is handled in the resulting search, thus distinguishing these paper-originated queries from those coming from queries typed into web browsers and other sources.
  • the system may take different actions or offer different options when the results are returned by the searches originated from paper as compared to those from other sources.
  • the same index can be searched using either paper-originated or traditional queries, but the index may be enhanced for use in the current system in a variety of ways. 4.1.1. Knowledge about the paper form
  • Extra fields can be added to such an index that will help in the case of a paper-based search.
  • the first example is a field indicating that the document is known to exist or be distributed in paper form.
  • the system may give such documents higher priority if the query comes from paper.
  • Another important example may be recording information about the layout of a specific rendering of a document.
  • the index may include information about where the line breaks and page breaks occur, which fonts were used, any unusual capitalization.
  • the index may also include information about the proximity of other items on the page, such as images, text boxes, tables and advertisements.
  • a second factor that may modify the nature of the index is the knowledge of the type of capture likely to be used.
  • a search initiated by an optical scan may benefit if the index takes into account characters that are easily confused in the OCR process, or includes some knowledge of the fonts used in the document.
  • the query is from speech recognition, an index based on similar- sounding phonemes may be much more efficiently searched.
  • An additional factor that may affect the use of the index in the described model is the importance of iterative feedback during the recognition process. If the search engine is able to provide feedback from the index as the text is being captured, it can greatly increase the accuracy of the capture.
  • the system stores the appropriate offset or signature information in an index.
  • Indices may be maintained on several machines on a corporate network. Partial indices may be downloaded to the capture device, or to a machine close to the capture device. Separate indices may be created for users or groups of users with particular interests, habits or permissions. An index may exist for each filesystem, each directory, even each file on a user's hard disk. Indexes are published and subscribed to by users and by systems. It will be important, then, to construct indices that can be distributed, updated, merged and separated efficiently.
  • a search engine may take different actions when it recognizes that a search query originated from a paper document.
  • the engine might handle the query in a way that is more tolerant to the types of errors likely to appear in certain capture methods, for example.
  • It may be able to deduce this from some indicator included in the query (for example a flag indicating the nature of the capture), or it may deduce this from the query itself (for example, it may recognize errors or uncertainties typical of the OCR process).
  • queries from a capture device can reach the engine by a different channel or port or type of connection than those from other sources, and can be distinguished in that way.
  • some embodiments of the system will route queries to the search engine by way of a dedicated gateway.
  • the search engine knows that all queries passing through the dedicated gateway were originated from a paper document.
  • Section 13 describes a variety of different factors which are external to the captured text itself, yet which can be a significant aid in identifying a document. These include such things as the history of recent scans, the longer-term reading habits of a particular user, the geographic location of a user and the user's recent use of particular electronic documents. Such factors are referred to herein as "context.”
  • search engine may keep track of a user's scanning history, and may also cross-reference this scanning history to conventional keyboard-based queries. In such cases, the search engine maintains and uses more state information about each individual user than do most conventional search engines, and each interaction with a search engine may be considered to extend over several searches and a longer period of time than is typical today.
  • Some of the context may be transmitted to the search engine in the search query (Section 3.3), and may possibly be stored at the engine so as to play a part in future queries. Lastly, some of the context will best be handled elsewhere, and so becomes a filter or secondary search applied to the results from the search engine. Data-stream input to search
  • the described system can emit and use not only information about documents as a whole, but also information about sub-regions of documents, even down to individual words.
  • Many existing search engines concentrate simply on locating a document or file that is relevant to a particular query. Those that can work on a finer grain and identify a location within a document will provide a significant benefit for the described system.
  • the search engine may use some of the further information it now maintains to affect the results returned.
  • the system may also return certain documents to which the user has access only as a result of being in possession of the paper copy (Section 7.4).
  • the search engine may also offer new actions or options appropriate to the described system, beyond simple retrieval of the text.
  • the described system In addition to performing the capture-search-retrieve process, the described system also associates extra functionality with a document, and in particular with specific locations or segments of text within a document. This extra functionality is often, though not exclusively, associated with the rendered document by being associated with its electronic counterpart. As an example, hyperlinks in a web page could have the same functionality when a printout of that web page is scanned. In some cases, the functionality is not defined in the electronic document, but is stored or generated elsewhere.
  • markup is as an "overlay" on the document, which provides further information about — and may specify actions associated with- -the document or some portion of it.
  • the markup may include human-readable content, but is often invisible to a user and/or intended for machine use. Examples include options to be displayed in a popup-menu on a nearby display when a user captures text from a particular area in a rendered document, or audio samples that illustrate the pronunciation of a particular phrase.
  • Any document may have multiple overlays simultaneously, and these may be sourced from a variety of locations.
  • Markup data may be created or supplied by the author of the document, or by the user, or by some other party.
  • Markup data may be attached to the electronic document or embedded in it. It may be found in a conventional location (for example, in the same place as the document but with a different filename suffix). Markup data may be included in the search results of the query that located the original document, or may be found by a separate query to the same or another search engine. Markup data may be found using the original captured text and other capture information or contextual information, or it may be found using already-deduced information about the document and location of the capture. Markup data may be found in a location specified in the document, even if the markup itself is not included in the document.
  • the markup may be largely static and specific to the document, similar to the way links on a traditional html web page are often embedded as static data within the html document, but markup may also be dynamically generated and/or applied to a large number of documents.
  • An example of dynamic markup is information attached to a document that includes the up-to-date share price of companies mentioned in that document.
  • An example of broadly applied markup is translation information that is automatically available on multiple documents or sections of documents in a particular language. 5.1.2. Personal "plug-in" layers
  • Users may also install, or subscribe to particular sources of, markup data, thus personalizing the system's response to particular captures.
  • Some elements in documents may have particular "markup" or functionality associated with them based on their own characteristics rather than their location in a particular document. Examples include special marks that are printed in the document purely for the purpose of being scanned, as well as logos and trademarks that can link the user to further information about the organization concerned. The same applies to "keywords" or "key phrases” in the text. Organizations might register particular phrases with which they are associated, or with which they would like to be associated, and attach certain markup to them that would be available wherever that phrase was scanned.
  • Any word, phrase, etc. may have associated markup.
  • the system may add certain items to a pop-up menu (e.g., a link to an online bookstore) whenever the user captures the word "book," or the title of a book, or a topic related to books.
  • digital counterpart documents or indices are consulted to determine whether a capture occurred near the word "book," or the title of a book, or a topic related to books - and the system behavior is modified in accordance with this proximity to keyword elements.
  • markup enables data captured from non-commercial text or documents to trigger a commercial transaction.
  • Annotations are another type of electronic information that may be associated with a document.
  • a user can attach an audio file of his/her thoughts about a particular document for later retrieval as voice annotations.
  • a multimedia annotation a user may attach photographs of places referred to in the document.
  • the user generally supplies annotations for the document but the system can associate annotations from other sources (for example, other users in a work group may share annotations). 5.3.2. Notes from proof-reading
  • markup data may often be supplied by third parties, such as by other readers of the document. Online discussions and reviews are a good example, as are community-managed information relating to particular works, volunteer-contributed translations and explanations.
  • markup By analyzing the data captured from documents by several or all users of the system, markup can be generated based on the activities and interests of a community.
  • An example might be an online bookstore that creates markup or annotations that tell the user, in effect, "People who enjoyed this book also enjoyed " The markup may be less anonymous, and may tell the user which of the people in his/her contact list have also read this document recently.
  • Other examples of datastream analysis are included in Section 14.
  • Markup will often be based on external events and data sources, such as input from a corporate database, information from the public Internet, or statistics gathered by the local operating system.
  • Data sources may also be more local, and in particular may provide information about the user's context - his/her identity, location and activities.
  • the system might communicate with the user's mobile phone and offer a markup layer that gives the user the option to send a document to somebody that the user has recently spoken to on the phone.
  • the identity of the user will be known. Sometimes this will be an “anonymous identity,” where the user is identified only by the serial number of the capture device, for example. Typically, however, it is expected that the system will have a much more detailed knowledge of the user, which can be used for personalizing the system and to allow activities and transactions to be performed in the user's name.
  • One of the simplest and yet most useful functions that the system can perform is to keep a record for a user of the text that s/he has captured and any further information related to that capture, including the details of any documents found, the location within that document and any actions taken as a result.
  • the user can be presented with a "Life Library," a record of everything s/he has read and captured. This may be simply for personal interest, but may be used, for example, in a library by an academic who is gathering material for the bibliography of his next paper.
  • the user may wish to make the library public, such as by publishing it on the web in a similar manner to a weblog, so that others may see what s/he is reading and finds of interest.
  • the capture can be stored in the library and can be processed later, either automatically or in response to a user request.
  • a user can also subscribe to new markup services and apply them to previously captured scans.
  • a record of a user's past captures is also useful for the system. Many aspects of the system operation can be enhanced by knowing the user's reading habits and history. The simplest example is that any scan made by a user is more likely to come from a document that the user has scanned in the recent past, and in particular if the previous scan was within the last few minutes it is very likely to be from the same document. Similarly, it is more likely that a document is being read in start-to-finish order. Thus, for English documents, it is also more likely that later scans will occur farther down in the document. Such factors can help the system establish the location of the capture in cases of ambiguity, and can also reduce the amount of text that needs to be captured.
  • Scanner as payment, identity and authentication device
  • this device may be used as a key that identifies the user and authorizes certain actions.
  • the device may be embedded in a mobile phone or in some other way associated with a mobile phone account.
  • a scanner may be associated with a mobile phone account by inserting a SIM card associated with the account into the scanner.
  • the device may be embedded in a credit card or other payment card, or have the system for such a card to be connected to it. The device may therefore be used as a payment token, and financial transactions may be initiated by the capture from the rendered document.
  • the scanner may also be associated with a particular user or account through the process of scanning some token, symbol or text associated with that user or account.
  • scanner may be used for biometric identification, for example by scanning the fingerprint of the user.
  • the system may identify the user by matching the voice pattern of the user or by requiring the user to speak a certain password or phrase.
  • the capture device When the capture device is used to identify and authenticate the user, and to initiate transactions on behalf of the user, it is important that communications between the device and other parts of the system are secure. It is also important to guard against such situations as another device impersonating a scanner, and so- called "man in the middle" attacks where communications between the device and other components are intercepted.
  • An advantage of the described system is that there is no need to alter the traditional processes of creating, printing or publishing documents in order to gain many of the system's benefits. There are reasons, though, that the creators or publishers of a document - hereafter simply referred to as the "publishers" - may wish to create functionality to support the described system.
  • the system allows for printed documents to have an associated electronic presence.
  • Conventionally publishers often ship a CD-ROM with a book that contains further digital information, tutorial movies and other multimedia data, sample code or documents, or further reference materials.
  • some publishers maintain web sites associated with particular publications which provide such materials, as well as information which may be updated after the time of publishing, such as errata, further comments, updated reference materials, bibliographies and further sources of relevant data, and translations into other languages. Online forums allow readers to contribute their comments about the publication.
  • the described system allows such materials to be much more closely tied to the rendered document than ever before, and allows the discovery of and interaction with them to be much easier for the user.
  • the system can automatically connect the user to digital materials associated with the document, and more particularly associated with that specific part of the document.
  • the user can be connected to online communities that discuss that section of the text, or to annotations and commentaries by other readers. In the past, such information would typically need to be found by searching for a particular page number or chapter.
  • Some publishers may have mailing lists to which readers can subscribe if they wish to be notified of new relevant matter or when a new edition of the book is published.
  • the user can register an interest in particular documents or parts of documents more easily, in some cases even before the publisher has considered providing any such functionality.
  • the reader's interest can be fed to the publisher, possibly affecting their decision about when and where to provide updates, further information, new editions or even completely new publications on topics that have proved to be of interest in existing books.
  • Printed marks with special meaning or containing special data Many aspects of the system are enabled simply through the use of the text already existing in a document. If the document is produced in the knowledge that it may be used in conjunction with the system, however, extra functionality can be added by printing extra information in the form of special marks, which may be used to identify the text or a required action more closely, or otherwise enhance the document's interaction with the system. The simplest and most important example is an indication to the reader that the document is definitely accessible through the system. A special icon might be used, for example, to indicate that this document has an online discussion forum associated with it.
  • Such symbols may be intended purely for the reader, or they may be recognized by the system when scanned and used to initiate some action. Sufficient data may be encoded in the symbol to identify more than just the symbol: it may also store information, for example about the document, edition, and location of the symbol, which could be recognized and read by the system. 7.4. Authorization through possession of the paper document
  • the printed document is a gateway to extra materials and functionality, access to such features can also be time-limited. After the expiry date, a user may be required to pay a fee or obtain a newer version of the document to access the features again.
  • the paper document will, of course, still be usable, but will lose some of its enhanced electronic functionality. This may be desirable, for example, because there is profit for the publisher in receiving fees for access to electronic materials, or in requiring the user to purchase new editions from time to time, or because there are disadvantages associated with outdated versions of the printed document remaining in circulation. Coupons are an example of a type of commercial document that can have an expiration date.
  • Section 10.5 discusses the use of the system's statistics to influence compensation of authors and pricing of advertisements.
  • the system deduces the popularity of a publication from the activity in the electronic community associated with it as well as from the use of the paper document. These factors may help publishers to make decisions about what they will publish in future. If a chapter in an existing book, for example, turns out to be exceedingly popular, it may be worth expanding into a separate publication.
  • An important aspect of the described system is the ability to provide to a user who has access to a rendered copy of a document access to an electronic version of that document.
  • a document is freely available on a public network or a private network to which the user has access.
  • the system uses the captured text to identify, locate and retrieve the document, in some cases displaying it on the user's screen or depositing it in their email inbox.
  • a document will be available in electronic form, but for a variety of reasons may not be accessible to the user. There may not be sufficient connectivity to retrieve the document, the user may not be entitled to retrieve it, there may be a cost associated with gaining access to it, or the document may have been withdrawn and possibly replaced by a new version, to name just a few possibilities.
  • the system typically provides feedback to the user about these situations.
  • the degree or nature of the access granted to a particular user may be different if it is known that the user already has access to a printed copy of the document.
  • Access to the document may be restricted to specific users, or to those meeting particular criteria, or may only be available in certain circumstances, for example when the user is connected to a secure network.
  • Section 6 describes some of the ways in which the credentials of a user and scanner may be established.
  • Documents that are not freely available to the general public may still be accessible on payment of a fee, often as compensation to the publisher or copyright- holder.
  • the system may implement payment facilities directly or may make use of other payment methods associated with the user, including those described in Section 6.2.
  • Electronic documents are often transient; the digital source version of a rendered document may be available now but inaccessible in future.
  • the system may retrieve and store the existing version on behalf of the user, even if the user has not requested it, thus guaranteeing its availability should the user request it in future. This also makes it available for the system's use, for example for searching as part of the process of identifying future captures.
  • a trusted "document escrow" service can retrieve the document on behalf of the user, such as upon payment of a modest fee, with the assurance that the copyright holder will be fully compensated in future if the user should ever request the document from the service.
  • association may not be quite so direct: a user may be granted access based on an account established by their employer, or based on their scanning of a printed copy owned by a friend who is a subscriber.
  • the described system could be coupled to a database which records the location of an original document, for example in an archiving warehouse, making it easy for somebody with access to a copy to locate the archived original paper document.
  • OCR Optical Character Recognition
  • a scanning device for use with the described system will often be small, portable, and low power.
  • the scanning device may capture only a few words at a time, and in some implementations does not even capture a whole character at once, but rather a horizontal slice through the text, many such slices being stitched together to form a recognizable signal from which the text may be deduced.
  • the scanning device may also have very limited processing power or storage so, while in some embodiments it may perform all of the OCR process itself, many embodiments will depend on a connection to a more powerful device, possibly at a later time, to convert the captured signals into text. Lastly, it may have very limited facilities for user interaction, so may need to defer any requests for user input until later, or operate in a "best-guess" mode to a greater degree than is common now.
  • OCR optical character recognition
  • the OCR process can be informed by the contents of the document corpus as it progresses, potentially offering substantially greater recognition accuracy.
  • Such a connection will also allow the device to inform the user when sufficient text has been captured to identify the digital source.
  • the font or a rendering of it, may be downloaded to the device to help with the recognition.
  • While component characters of a text fragment may be the most recognized way to represent a fragment of text that may be used as a document signature, other representations of the text may work sufficiently well that the actual text of a text fragment need not be used when attempting to locate the text fragment in a digital document and/or database, or when disambiguating the representation of a text fragment into a readable form.
  • Other representations of text fragments may provide benefits that actual text representations lack. For example, optical character recognition of text fragments is often prone to errors, unlike other representations of captured text fragments that may be used to search for and/or recreate a text fragment without resorting to optical character recognition for the entire fragment. Such methods may be more appropriate for some devices used with the current system.
  • characterizations of text fragments may include, but are not limited to, word lengths, relative word lengths, character heights, character widths, character shapes, character frequencies, token frequencies, and the like.
  • the offsets between matching text tokens i.e., the number of intervening tokens plus one are used to characterize fragments of text.
  • each token i.e., the particular letter, digit or symbol, or group of these, that corresponds to the token image
  • the offset number is the distance (number of tokens) to the next occurrence of the same token. If the token is unique within the text string, the offset is zero (0).
  • the sequence of token offsets thus generated is a signature that can be used to identify the scanned text.
  • the token offsets determined for a string of scanned tokens are compared to an index that indexes a corpus of electronic documents based upon the token offsets of their contents (Section 4.1.2).
  • the token offsets determined for a string of scanned tokens are converted to text, and compared to a more conventional index that indexes a corpus of electronic documents based upon their contents
  • the capture of text may be linked to other commercial activities in a variety of ways.
  • the captured text may be in a catalog that is explicitly designed to sell items, in which case the text will be associated fairly directly with the purchase of an item (Section 18.2).
  • the text may also be part of an advertisement, in which case a sale of the item being advertised may ensue.
  • the user captures other text from which their potential interest in a commercial transaction may be deduced.
  • a reader of a novel set in a particular country might be interested in a holiday there. Someone reading a review of a new car might be considering purchasing it.
  • the user may capture a particular fragment of text knowing that some commercial opportunity will be presented to them as a result, or it may be a side-effect of their capture activities.
  • advertisements In a traditional paper publication, advertisements generally consume a large amount of space relative to the text of a newspaper article, and a limited number of them can be placed around a particular article.
  • advertising can be associated with individual words or phrases, and can selected according to the particular interest the user has shown by capturing that text and possibly taking into account their history of past scans.
  • the system may gather a large amount of information about other aspects of a user's context for its own use (Section 13); estimates of the geographical location of the user are a good example. Such data can also be used to tailor the advertising presented to a user of the system.
  • the system enables some new models of compensation for advertisers and marketers.
  • the publisher of a printed document containing advertisements may receive some income from a purchase that originated from their document. This may be true whether or not the advertisement existed in the original printed form; it may have been added electronically either by the publisher, the advertiser or some third party, and the sources of such advertising may have been subscribed to by the user.
  • Analysis of the statistics generated by the system can reveal the popularity of certain parts of a publication (Section 14.2).
  • a newspaper for example, it might reveal the amount of time readers spend looking at a particular page or article, or the popularity of a particular columnist.
  • An author whose work becomes a frequently read authority on a subject might be considered differently in future contracts from one whose books have sold the same number of copies but are rarely opened. (See also Section 7.6)
  • the "Life Library” or scan history described in Sections 6.1 and 16.1 can be an extremely valuable source of information about the interests and habits of a user. Subject to the appropriate consent and privacy issues, such data can inform offers of goods or services to the user. Even in an anonymous form, the statistics gathered can be exceedingly useful.
  • Advertising and other opportunities for commercial transactions may not be presented to the user immediately at the time of text capture. For example, the opportunity to purchase a sequel to a novel may not be available at the time the user is reading the novel, but the system may present them with that opportunity when the sequel is published.
  • a user may capture data that relates to a purchase or other commercial transaction, but may choose not to initiate and/or complete the transaction at the time the capture is made.
  • data related to captures is stored in a user's Life Library, and these Life Library entries can remain "active" (i.e., capable of subsequent interactions similar to those available at the time the capture was made).
  • a user may review a capture at some later time, and optionally complete a transaction based on that capture. Because the system can keep track of when and where the original capture occurred, all parties involved in the transaction can be properly compensated.
  • the author who wrote the story - and the publisher who published the story - that appeared next to the advertisement from which the user captured data can be compensated when, six months later, the user visits their Life Library, selects that particular capture from the history, and chooses "Purchase this item at Amazon" from the pop-up menu (which can be similar or identical to the menu optionally presented at the time of the capture).
  • OSs Modern Operating Systems
  • other software packages have many characteristics that can be advantageously exploited for use with the described system, and may also be modified in various ways to provide an even better platform for its use.
  • New and upcoming file systems and their associated databases often have the ability to store a variety of metadata associated with each file.
  • this metadata has included such things as the ID of the user who created the file, the dates of creation, last modification, and last use.
  • Newer file systems allow such extra information as keywords, image characteristics, document sources and user comments to be stored, and in some systems this metadata can be arbitrarily extended. File systems can therefore be used to store information that would be useful in implementing the current system. For example, the date when a given document was last printed can be stored by the file system, as can details about which text from it has been captured from paper using the described system, and when and by whom.
  • OSs include support for speech or handwriting recognition, though it is less common for OSs to include support for OCR, since in the past the use of OCR has typically been limited to a small range of applications.
  • recognition components become part of the OS, they can take better advantage of other facilities provided by the OS.
  • Many systems include spelling dictionaries, grammar analysis tools, internationalization and localization facilities, for example, all of which can be advantageously employed by the described system for its recognition process, especially since they may have been customized for the particular user to include words and phrases that he/she would commonly encounter.
  • an optical scan or other capture occurs and is presented to the OS, it may have a default action to be taken under those circumstances in the event that no other subsystem claims ownership of the capture.
  • An example of a default action is presenting the user with a choice of alternatives, or submitting the captured text to the OS's built-in search facilities.
  • OS has default action for particular documents or document types
  • the OS may have a standard action that it will take when that particular document, or a document of that class, is scanned.
  • Applications and other subsystems may register with the OS as potential handlers of particular types of capture, in a similar manner to the announcement by applications of their ability to handle certain file types.
  • Markup data associated with a rendered document, or with a capture from a document can include instructions to the operating system to launch specific applications, pass applications arguments, parameters, or data, etc.
  • a typical use of the system may be for the user to scan an area of a paper document, and for the system to open the electronic counterpart in a software package that is able to display or edit it, and cause that package to scroll to and highlight the scanned text (Section 12.2.1 ).
  • the first part of this process, finding and opening the electronic document is typically provided by the OS and is standard across software packages.
  • the second part, however - locating a particular piece of text within a document and causing the package to scroll to it and highlight it - is not yet standardized and is often implemented differently by each package.
  • the availability of a standard API for this functionality could greatly enhance the operation of this aspect of the system.
  • the system may wish to perform a variety of operations upon that text. As an example, the system may request the surrounding text, so that the user's capture of a few words could result in the system accessing the entire sentence or paragraph containing them. Again, this functionality can be usefully provided by the OS rather than being implemented in every piece of software that handles text.
  • the system uses the application pop-up menus traditionally associated with clicking the right mouse button on some text. The system inserts extra options into such menus, and causes them to be displayed as a result of activities such as scanning a paper document. 11.4. Web/network interfaces
  • the OS keeps a simple record of when any document was printed and by whom.
  • the OS takes one or more further actions that would make it better suited for use with the system. Examples include:
  • An OS often maintains certain categories of folders or files that have particular significance.
  • a user's documents may, by convention or design, be found in a "My Documents" folder, for example.
  • Standard file-opening dialogs may automatically include a list of recently opened documents.
  • Categories may be enhanced or augmented in ways that take into account a user's interaction with paper versions of the stored files. Categories such as “My Printed Documents” or “My Recently-Read Documents” might usefully be identified and incorporated in its operations.
  • markup Since important aspects of the system are typically provided using the "markup" concepts discussed in Section 5, it would clearly be advantageous to have support for such markup provided by the OS in a way that was accessible to multiple applications as well as to the OS itself. In addition, layers of markup may be provided by the OS, based on its own knowledge of documents under its control and the facilities it is able to provide.
  • Digital Rights Management the ability to control the use of particular data according to the rights granted to a particular user, software entity or machine. It may inhibit unauthorized copying or distribution of a particular document, for example.
  • the user interface of the system may be entirely on a PC, if the capture device is relatively dumb and is connected to it by a cable, or entirely on the device, if it is sophisticated and with significant processing power of its own. In some cases, some functionality resides in each component. Part, or indeed all, of the system's functionality may also be implemented on other devices such as mobile phones or
  • a handheld scanner may have a variety of ways of providing feedback to the user about particular conditions. The most obvious types are direct visual, where the scanner incorporates indicator lights or even a full display, and auditory, where the scanner can make beeps, clicks or other sounds. Important alternatives include tactile feedback, where the scanner can vibrate, buzz, or otherwise stimulate the user's sense of touch, and projected feedback, where it indicates a status by projecting onto the paper anything from a colored spot of light to a sophisticated display.
  • Important immediate feedback that may be provided on the device includes:
  • the device may provide a variety of ways for the user to provide input in addition to basic text capture. Even when the device is in close association with a host machine that has input options such as keyboards and mice, it can be disruptive for the user to switch back and forth between manipulating the scanner and using a mouse, for example.
  • the handheld scanner may have buttons, scroll/jog-wheels, touch- sensitive surfaces, and/or accelerometers for detecting the movement of the device. Some of these allow a richer set of interactions while still holding the scanner.
  • the system in response to scanning some text, the system presents the user with a set of several possible matching documents.
  • the user uses a scroll- wheel on the side of the scanner is to select one from the list, and clicks a button to confirm the selection.
  • the user can indicate a large region of text by scanning the first few words in conventional left-to-right order, and the last few in reverse order, i.e. right to left.
  • the user can also indicate the vertical extent of the text of interest by moving the scanner down the page over several lines.
  • a backwards scan might indicate cancellation of the previous scan operation.
  • the device may be used to capture text when it is out of contact with other parts of the system.
  • a very simple device may simply be able to store the image or audio data associated with the capture, ideally with a timestamp indicating when it was captured.
  • the various captures may be uploaded to the rest of the system when the device is next in contact with it, and handled then.
  • the device may also upload other data associated with the captures, for example voice annotations associated with optical scans, or location information.
  • More sophisticated devices may be able to perform some or all of the system operations themselves despite being disconnected. Various techniques for improving their ability to do so are discussed in Section 15.3. Often it will be the case that some, but not all, of the desired actions can be performed while offline. For example, the text may be recognized, but identification of the source may depend on a connection to an Internet-based search engine. In some embodiments, the device therefore stores sufficient information about how far each operation has progressed for the rest of the system to proceed efficiently when connectivity is restored.
  • the operation of the system will, in general, benefit from immediately available connectivity, but there are some situations in which performing several captures and then processing them as a batch can have advantages. For example, as discussed in Section 13 below, the identification of the source of a particular capture may be greatly enhanced by examining other captures made by the user at approximately the same time. In a fully connected system where live feedback is being provided to the user, the system is only able to use past captures when processing the current one. If the capture is one of a batch stored by the device when offline, however, the system will be able to take into account any data available from later captures as well as earlier ones when doing its analysis.
  • a scanner will often communicate with some other device, such as a PC, PDA, phone or digital camera to perform many of the functions of the system, including more detailed interactions with the user.
  • some other device such as a PC, PDA, phone or digital camera to perform many of the functions of the system, including more detailed interactions with the user.
  • the host device When the host device receives a capture, it may initiate a variety of activities. An incomplete list of possible activities performed by the system after locating and electronic counterpart document associated with the capture and a location within that document follows. [00260] • The details of the capture may be stored in the user's history. (Section 6.1 )
  • the document may be retrieved from local storage or a remote location. (Section 8)
  • a software application may be started to edit, view or otherwise operate on the document.
  • the choice of application may depend on the source document, or on the contents of the scan, or on some other aspect of the capture. (Section 11.2.2, 11.2.3)
  • the application may scroll to, highlight, move the insertion point to, or otherwise indicate the location of the capture. (Section 11.3)
  • Annotations may be associated with the document or the captured text. These may come from immediate user input, or may have been captured earlier, for example in the case of voice annotations associated with an optical scan. (Section 19.4)
  • Markup may be examined to determine a set of further possible operations for the user to select.
  • the scanner device projects a popup menu onto the paper document.
  • a user may select from such menus using traditional methods such as a keyboard and mouse, or by using controls on the capture device (Section 12.1.2), gestures (Section 12.1.3), or by interacting with the computer display using the scanner (Section 12.2.4).
  • the popup menus which can appear as a result of a capture include default items representing actions which occur if the user does not respond - for example, if the user ignores the menu and makes another capture.
  • the system provides a real-time display of the documents or the locations found, for example in list, thumbnail-image or text-segment form, and for the number of elements in that display to reduce in number as capture continues.
  • the system displays thumbnails of all candidate documents, where the size or position of the thumbnail is dependent on the probability of it being the correct match.
  • the text captured will occur in many documents and will be recognized to be a quotation.
  • the system may indicate this on the screen, for example by grouping documents containing a quoted reference around the original source document.
  • Some optical scanners may be able to capture text displayed on a screen as well as on paper. Accordingly, the term rendered document is used herein to indicate that printing onto paper is not the only form of rendering, and that the capture of text or symbols for use by the system may be equally valuable when that text is displayed on an electronic display.
  • the user of the described system may be required to interact with a computer screen for a variety of other reasons, such as to select from a list of options. It can be inconvenient for the user to put down the scanner and start using the mouse or keyboard.
  • Other sections have described physical controls on the scanner (Section 12.1.2) or gestures (Section 12.1.3) as methods of input which do not require this change of tool, but using the scanner on the screen itself to scan some text or symbol is an important alternative provided by the system.
  • the optics of the scanner allow it to be used in a similar manner to a light-pen, directly sensing its position on the screen without the need for actual scanning of text, possibly with the aid of special hardware or software on the computer.
  • Another example of useful context is the user's geographical location.
  • a user in Paris is much more likely to be reading Le Monde than the Seattle Times, for example.
  • the timing, size and geographical distribution of printed versions of the documents can therefore be important, and can to some degree be deduced from the operation of the system.
  • the time of day may also be relevant, for example in the case of a user who always reads one type of publication on the way to work, and a different one at lunchtime or on the train going home.
  • Section 14 covers the analysis of the data stream resulting from paper- based searches, but it should be noted here that statistics about the popularity of documents with other readers, about the timing of that popularity, and about the parts of documents most frequently scanned are all examples of further factors which can be beneficial in the search process.
  • the system brings the possibility of Google-type page-ranking to the world of paper.
  • One example is connecting one user with others who have related interests. These may be people already known to the user.
  • the system may ask a university professor, "Did you know that your colleague at XYZ University has also just read this paper?"
  • the system may ask a user, "Do you want to be linked up with other people in your neighborhood who are also how reading Jane Eyre?"
  • Such links may be the basis for the automatic formation of book clubs and similar social structures, either in the physical world or online.
  • Section 10.6 has already mentioned the idea of offering products and services to an individual user based on their interactions with the system.
  • Current online booksellers for example, often make recommendations to a user based on their previous interactions with the bookseller. Such recommendations become much more useful when they are based on interactions with the actual books.
  • the user will also not just be capturing some text, but will be causing some action to occur as a result. It might be emailing a reference to the document to an acquaintance, for example. Even in the absence of information about the identity of the user or the recipient of the email, the knowledge that somebody considered the document worth emailing is very useful.
  • a capture device for use with the system needs little more than a way of capturing text from a rendered version of the document.
  • this capture may be achieved through a variety of methods including taking a photograph of part of the document or typing some words into a mobile phone keypad.
  • This capture may be achieved using a small hand-held optical scanner capable of recording a line or two of text at a time, or an audio capture device such as a voice-recorder into which the user is reading text from the document.
  • the device used may be a combination of these - an optical scanner which could also record voice annotations, for example - and the capturing functionality may be built into some other device such as a mobile phone, PDA, digital camera or portable music player.
  • the device will incorporate many of these, sometimes very few.
  • the capture device will be able to communicate with another device that already has them (Section 15.6), for example using a wireless link, and sometimes the capture functionality will be incorporated into such other device (Section 15.7).
  • the device implements the majority of the system itself. In some embodiments, however, it often communicates with a PC or other computing device and with the wider world using communications facilities.
  • these communications facilities are in the form of a general- purpose data network such as Ethernet, 802.11 or UWB or a standard peripheral- connecting network such as USB, IEEE-1394 (Firewire), BluetoothTM or infra-red.
  • a wired connection such as Firewire or USB
  • the capture device may appear to a connected machine to be a conventional peripheral such as a USB storage device.
  • the device may in some circumstances “dock” with another device, either to be used in conjunction with that device or for convenient storage.
  • Sections 3.5 and 12.1.4 have raised the topic of disconnected operation.
  • the device can still be useful, though the functionality available will sometimes be reduced.
  • the device can record the raw image or audio data being captured and this can be processed later.
  • it can be important to give feedback where possible about whether the data captured is likely to be sufficient for the task in hand, whether it can be recognized or is likely to be recognizable, and whether the source of the data can be identified or is likely to be identifiable later.
  • the user will then know whether their capturing activity is worthwhile. Even when all of the above are unknown, the raw data can still be stored so that, at the very least, the user can refer to them later.
  • the user may be presented with the image of a scan, for example, when the scan cannot be recognized by the OCR process.
  • the SimpleScanner has a scanning head able to read pixels from the page as it is moved along the length of a line of text. It can detect its movement along the page and record the pixels with some information about the movement. It also has a clock, which allows each scan to be time-stamped. The clock is synchronized with a host device when the SimpleScanner has connectivity. The clock may not represent the actual time of day, but relative times may be determined from it so that the host can deduce the actual time of a scan, or at worst the elapsed time between scans.
  • the SimpleScanner does not have sufficient processing power to perform any OCR itself, but it does have some basic knowledge about typical word- lengths, word-spacings, and their relationship to font size. It has some basic indicator lights which tell the user whether the scan is likely to be readable, whether the head is being moved too fast, too slowly or too inaccurately across the paper, and when it determines that sufficient words of a given size are likely to have been scanned for the document to be identified.
  • the SimpleScanner has a USB connector and can be plugged into the USB port on a computer, where it will be recharged. To the computer it appears to be a USB storage device on which time-stamped data files have been recorded, and the rest of the system software takes over from this point.
  • the SuperScanner also depends on connectivity for its full operation, but it has a significant amount of on-board storage and processing which can help it make better judgments about the data captured while offline.
  • the captured pixels are stitched together and passed to an OCR engine that attempts to recognize the text.
  • a number of fonts including those from the user's most-read publications, have been downloaded to it to help perform this task, as has a dictionary that is synchronized with the user's spelling-checker dictionary on their PC and so contains many of the words they frequently encounter.
  • Also stored on the scanner is a list of words and phrases with the typical frequency of their use - this may be combined with the dictionary. The scanner can use the frequency statistics both to help with the recognition process and also to inform its judgment about when a sufficient quantity of text has been captured; more frequently used phrases are less likely to be useful as the basis for a search query.
  • the full index for the articles in the recent issues of the newspapers and periodicals most commonly read by the user are stored on the device, as are the indices for the books the user has recently purchased from an online bookseller, or from which the user has scanned anything within the last few months.
  • the titles of several thousand of the most popular publications which have data available for the system are stored so that, in the absence of other information the user can scan the title and have a good idea as to whether or not captures from a particular work are likely to be retrievable in electronic form later.
  • the system informs user that the captured data has been of sufficient quality and of a sufficient nature to make it probable that the electronic copy can be retrieved when connectivity is restored. Often the system indicates to the user that the scan is known to have been successful and that the context has been recognized in one of the on-board indices, or that the publication concerned is known to be making its data available to the system, so the later retrieval ought to be successful.
  • the SuperScanner docks in a cradle connected to a PC's Firewire or USB port, at which point, in addition to the upload of captured data, its various onboard indices and other databases are updated based on recent user activity and new publications. It also has the system to connect to wireless public networks or to communicate via Bluetooth to a mobile phone and thence with the public network when such facilities are available. 15.4.
  • Some embodiments of the system use a scanner that scans in contact with the paper, and which, instead of lenses, uses an image conduit a bundle of optical fibers to transmit the image from the page to the optical sensor device.
  • a scanner that scans in contact with the paper, and which, instead of lenses, uses an image conduit a bundle of optical fibers to transmit the image from the page to the optical sensor device.
  • Such a device can be shaped to allow it to be held in a natural position; for example, in some embodiments, the part in contact with the page is wedge-shaped, allowing the user's hand to move more naturally over the page in a movement similar to the use of a highlighter pen.
  • the conduit is either in direct contact with the paper or in close proximity to it, and may have a replaceable transparent tip that can protect the image conduit from possible damage.
  • the scanner may be used to scan from a screen as well as from paper, and the material of the tip can be chosen to reduce the likelihood of damage to such displays.
  • some embodiments of the device will provide feedback to the user during the scanning process which will indicate through the use of light, sound or tactile feedback when the user is scanning too fast, too slow, too unevenly or is drifting too high or low on the scanned line. 15.5. Security, identity, authentication, personalization and billing
  • the capture device may form an important part of identification and authorization for secure transactions, purchases, and a variety of other operations. It may therefore incorporate, in addition to the circuitry and software required for such a role, various hardware features that can make it more secure, such as a smartcard reader, RFID, or a keypad on which to type a PIN.
  • the scanning head may also be able to read a fingerprint.
  • the voice pattern of the user may be used.
  • the device is able to form an association with other nearby devices to increase either its own or their functionality.
  • it uses the display of a nearby PC or phone to give more detailed feedback about its operation, or uses their network connectivity.
  • the device may, on the other hand, operate in its role as a security and identification device to authenticate operations performed by the other device. Or it may simply form an association in order to function as a peripheral to that device.
  • An interesting aspect of such associations is that they may be initiated and authenticated using the capture facilities of the device. For example, a user wishing to identify themselves securely to a public computer terminal may use the scanning facilities of the device to scan a code or symbol displayed on a particular area of the terminal's screen and so effect a key transfer. An analogous process may be performed using audio signals picked up by a voice-recording device.
  • the functionality of the capture device is integrated into some other device that is already in use.
  • the integrated devices may be able to share a power supply, data capture and storage capabilities, and network interfaces. Such integration may be done simply for convenience, to reduce cost, or to enable functionality that would not otherwise be available.
  • Some examples of devices into which the capture functionality can be integrated include:
  • an existing peripheral such as a mouse, a stylus, a USB “webcam” camera, a BluetoothTM headset or a remote control
  • Another processing/storage device such as a PDA, an MP3 player, a voice recorder, a digital camera or a mobile phone
  • the phone hardware is not modified to support the system, such as where the text capture can be adequately done through voice recognition, where they can either be processed by the phone itself, or handled by a system at the other end of a telephone call, or stored in the phone's memory for future processing.
  • voice recognition can either be processed by the phone itself, or handled by a system at the other end of a telephone call, or stored in the phone's memory for future processing.
  • Many modern phones have the ability to download software that could implement some parts of the system.
  • voice capture is likely to be suboptimal in many situations, however, for example when there is substantial background noise, and accurate voice recognition is a difficult task at the best of times.
  • the audio facilities may best be used to capture voice annotations.
  • the camera built into many mobile phones is used to capture an image of the text.
  • the phone display which would normally act as a viewfinder for the camera, may overlay on the live camera image information about the quality of the image and its suitability for OCR, which segments of text are being captured, and even a transcription of the text if the OCR can be performed on the phone.
  • the phone is modified to add dedicated capture facilities, or to provide such functionality in a clip-on adaptor or a separate Bluetooth- connected peripheral in communication with the phone.
  • the phone has connectivity with the wider world, which means that queries can be submitted to remote search engines or other parts of the system, and copies of documents may be retrieved for immediate storage or viewing.
  • a phone typically has sufficient processing power for many of the functions of the system to be performed locally, and sufficient storage to capture a reasonable amount of data. The amount of storage can also often be expanded by the user. Phones have reasonably good displays and audio facilities to provide user feedback, and often a vibrate function for tactile feedback. They also have good power supplies.
  • the Life Library (see also Section 6.1.1 ) is a digital archive of any important documents that the subscriber wishes to save and is a set of embodiments of services of this system. Important books, magazine articles, newspaper clippings, etc., can all be saved in digital form in the Life Library. Additionally, the subscriber's annotations, comments, and notes can be saved with the documents.
  • the Life Library can be accessed via the Internet and World Wide Web.
  • the system creates and manages the Life Library document archive for subscribers.
  • the subscriber indicates which documents the subscriber wishes to have saved in his life library by scanning information from the document or by otherwise indicating to the system that the particular document is to be added to the subscriber's Life Library.
  • the scanned information is typically text from the document but can also be a barcode or other code identifying the document.
  • the system accepts the code and uses it to identify the source document. After the document is identified the system can store either a copy of the document in the user's Life Library or a link to a source where the document may be obtained.
  • One embodiment of the Life Library system can check whether the subscriber is authorized to obtain the electronic copy.
  • the Life Library system will verify with the NYT whether the reader is subscribed to the online version of the NYT; if so, the reader gets a copy of the article stored in his Life Library account; if not, information identifying the document and how to order it is stored in his Life Library account.
  • NYT New York Times
  • the system maintains a subscriber profile for each subscriber that includes access privilege information.
  • Document access information can be compiled in several ways, two of which are: 1) the subscriber supplies the document access information to the Life Library system, along with his account names and passwords, etc., or 2) the Life Library service provider queries the publisher with the subscriber's information and the publisher responds by providing access to an electronic copy if the Life Library subscriber is authorized to access the material. If the Life Library subscriber is not authorized to have an electronic copy of the document, the publisher provides a price to the Life Library service provider, which then provides the customer with the option to purchase the electronic document.
  • the Life Library service provider either pays the publisher directly and bills the Life Library customer later or the Life Library service provider immediately bills the customer's credit card for the purchase.
  • the Life Library service provider would get a percentage of the purchase price or a small fixed fee for facilitating the transaction.
  • the system can archive the document in the subscriber's personal library and/or any other library to which the subscriber has archival privileges. For example, as a user scans text from a printed document, the Life Library system can identify the rendered document and its electronic counterpart. After the source document is identified, the Life Library system might record information about the source document in the user's personal library and in a group library to which the subscriber has archival privileges.
  • Group libraries are collaborative archives such as a document repository for: a group working together on a project, a group of academic researchers, a group web log, etc.
  • the life library can be organized in many ways: chronologically, by topic, by level of the subscriber's interest, by type of publication (newspaper, book, magazine, technical paper, etc.), where read, when read, by ISBN or by Dewey decimal, etc.
  • the system can learn classifications based on how other subscribers have classified the same document. The system can suggest classifications to the user or automatically classify the document for the user.
  • annotations may be inserted directly into the document or may be maintained in a separate file.
  • the article is archived in his Life Library with the scanned text highlighted.
  • the article is archived in his Life Library along with an associated annotation file (thus leaving the archived document unmodified).
  • Embodiments of the system can keep a copy of the source document in each subscriber's library, a copy in a master library that many subscribers can access, or link to a copy held by the publisher.
  • the Life Library stores only the user's modifications to the document (e.g., highlights, etc.) and a link to an online version of the document (stored elsewhere). The system or the subscriber merges the changes with the document when the subscriber subsequently retrieves the document.
  • the source document and the annotation file are provided to the subscriber and the subscriber combines them to create a modified document.
  • the system combines the two files prior to presenting them to the subscriber.
  • the annotation file is an overlay to the document file and can be overlaid on the document by software in the subscriber's computer.
  • Subscribers to the Life Library service pay a monthly fee to have the system maintain the subscriber's archive. Alternatively, the subscriber pays a small amount (e.g., a micro-payment) for each document stored in the archive. Alternatively, the subscriber pays to access the subscriber's archive on a per-access fee. Alternatively, subscribers can compile libraries and allow others to access the materials/annotations on a revenue share model with the Life Library service provider and copyright holders. Alternatively, the Life Library service provider receives a payment from the publisher when the Life Library subscriber orders a document (a revenue share model with the publisher, where the Life Library service provider gets a share of the publisher's revenue).
  • a small amount e.g., a micro-payment
  • subscribers can compile libraries and allow others to access the materials/annotations on a revenue share model with the Life Library service provider and copyright holders.
  • the Life Library service provider receives a payment from the publisher when the Life Library subscriber orders a document (a revenue share model with the publisher, where
  • the Life Library service provider acts as an intermediary between the subscriber and the copyright holder (or copyright holder's agent, such as the Copyright Clearance Center, a.k.a. CCC) to facilitate billing and payment for copyrighted materials.
  • the Life Library service provider uses the subscriber's billing information and other user account information to provide this intermediation service. Essentially, the Life Library service provider leverages the pre-existing relationship with the subscriber to enable purchase of copyrighted materials on behalf of the subscriber.
  • the Life Library system can store excerpts from documents. For example, when a subscriber scans text from a paper document, the regions around the scanned text are excerpted and placed in the Life Library, rather than the entire document being archived in the life library. This is especially advantageous when the document is long because preserving the circumstances of the original scan prevents the subscriber from re-reading the document to find the interesting portions. Of course, a hyperlink to the entire electronic counterpart of the paper document can be included with the excerpt materials.
  • the system also stores information about the document in the Life Library, such as author, publication title, publication date, publisher, copyright holder (or copyright holder's licensing agent), ISBN, links to public annotations of the document, readrank, etc.
  • information about the document is a form of paper document metadata.
  • Third parties may create public annotation files for access by persons other than themselves, such the general public. Linking to a third party's commentary on a document is advantageous because reading annotation files of other users enhances the subscriber's understanding of the document.
  • the system archives materials by class. This feature allows a Life Library subscriber to quickly store electronic counterparts to an entire class of paper documents without access to each paper document. For example, when the subscriber scans some text from a copy of National Geographic magazine, the system provides the subscriber with the option to archive all back issues of the National Geographic. If the subscriber elects to archive all back issues, the Life Library service provider would then verify with the National Geographic Society whether the subscriber is authorized to do so. If not, the Life Library service provider can mediate the purchase of the right to archive the National Geographic magazine collection.
  • a variation on, or enhancement of, the Life Library concept is the "Life Saver," where the system uses the text captured by a user to deduce more about their other activities.
  • the scanning of a menu from a particular restaurant, a program from a particular theater performance, a timetable at a particular railway station, or an article from a local newspaper allows the system to make deductions about the user's location and social activities, and could construct an automatic diary for them, for example as a website.
  • the user would be able to edit and modify the diary, add additional materials such as photographs and, of course, look again at the items scanned.
  • Portable scanners supported by the described system have many compelling uses in the academic setting. They can enhance student/teacher interaction and augment the learning experience. Among other uses, students can annotate study materials to suit their unique needs; teachers can monitor classroom performance; and teachers can automatically verify source materials cited in student assignments.
  • a child's interaction with a paper document, such as a book, is monitored by a literacy acquisition system that employs a specific set of embodiments of this system.
  • the child uses a portable scanner that communicates with other elements of the literacy acquisition system.
  • the literacy acquisition system includes a computer having a display and speakers, and a database accessible by the computer.
  • the scanner is coupled with the computer (hardwired, short range RF, etc.).
  • the literacy acquisition system compares the scanned text with the resources in its database to identify the word.
  • the database includes a dictionary, thesaurus, and/or multimedia files (e.g., sound, graphics, etc.).
  • the system uses the computer speakers to pronounce the word and its definition to the child.
  • the word and its definition are displayed by the literacy acquisition system on the computer's monitor.
  • Multimedia files about the scanned word can also be played through the computer's monitor and speakers. For example, if a child reading "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" scanned the word "bear,” the system might pronounce the word “bear” and play a short video about bears on the computer's monitor. In this way, the child learns to pronounce the written word and is visually taught what the word means via the multimedia presentation.
  • the literacy acquisition system provides immediate auditory and/or visual information to enhance the learning process.
  • the child uses this supplementary information to quickly acquire a deeper understanding of the written material.
  • the system can be used to teach beginning readers to read, to help children acquire a larger vocabulary, etc.
  • This system provides the child with information about words with which the child is unfamiliar or about which the child wants more information.
  • the system compiles personal dictionaries. If the reader sees a word that is new, interesting, or particularly useful or troublesome, the reader saves it (along with its definition) to a computer file. This computer file becomes the reader's personalized dictionary. This dictionary is generally smaller in size than a general dictionary so can be downloaded to a mobile station or associated device and thus be available even when the system isn't immediately accessible.
  • the personal dictionary entries include audio files to assist with proper word pronunciation and information identifying the paper document from which the word was scanned.
  • the system creates customized spelling and vocabulary tests for students. For example, as a student reads an assignment, the student may scan unfamiliar words with the portable scanner. The system stores a list of all the words that the student has scanned. Later, the system administers a customized spelling/vocabulary test to the student on an associated monitor (or prints such a test on an associated printer).
  • the arrangement of notes on a musical staff is similar to the arrangement of letters in a line of text.
  • the same scanning device discussed for capturing text in this system can be used to capture music notation, and an analogous process of constructing a search against databases of known musical pieces would allow the piece from which the capture occurred to be identified which can then be retrieved, played, or be the basis for some further action.
  • Teachers can use the system to detect plagiarism or to verify sources by scanning text from student papers and submitting the scanned text to the system. For example, a teacher who wishes to verify that a quote in a student paper came from the source that the student cited can scan a portion of the quote and compare the title of the document identified by the system with the title of the document cited by the student. Likewise, the system can use scans of text from assignments submitted as the student's original work to reveal if the text was instead copied.
  • capturing text from an academic textbook links students or staff to more detailed explanations, further exercises, student and staff discussions about the material, related example past exam questions, further reading on the subject, recordings of the lectures on the subject, and so forth. (See also Section 7.1.)
  • the system is used to teach foreign languages. Scanning a Spanish word, for example, might cause the word to be read aloud in Spanish along with its definition in English.
  • the system provides immediate auditory and/or visual information to enhance the new language acquisition process.
  • the reader uses this supplementary information to acquire quickly a deeper understanding of the material.
  • the system can be used to teach beginning students to read foreign languages, to help students acquire a larger vocabulary, etc.
  • the system provides information about foreign words with which the reader is unfamiliar or for which the reader wants more information.
  • Reader interaction with a paper document, such as a newspaper or book, is monitored by a language skills system.
  • the reader has a portable scanner that communicates with the language skills system.
  • the language skills system includes a computer having a display and speakers, and a database accessible by the computer.
  • the scanner communicates with the computer (hardwired, short range RF, etc.).
  • the database includes a foreign language dictionary, thesaurus, and/or multimedia files (sound, graphics, etc.).
  • the system compares the scanned text with the resources in its database to identify the scanned word. After the word has been identified, the system uses the computer speakers to pronounce the word and its definition to the reader.
  • the word and its definition are both displayed on the computer's monitor.
  • Multimedia files about grammar tips related to the scanned word can also be played through the computer's monitor and speakers. For example, if the words "to speak” are scanned, the system might pronounce the word “hablar,” play a short audio clip that demonstrates the proper Spanish pronunciation, and display a complete list of the various conjugations of "hablar.” In this way, the student learns to pronounce the written word, is visually taught the spelling of the word via the multimedia presentation, and learns how to conjugate the verb. The system can also present grammar tips about the proper usage of "hablar" along with common phrases.
  • the user scans a word or short phrase from a rendered document in a language other than the user's native language (or some other language that the user knows reasonably well).
  • the system maintains a prioritized list of the user's "preferred" languages.
  • the system identifies the electronic counterpart of the rendered document, and determines the location of the scan within the document.
  • the system also identifies a second electronic counterpart of the document that has been translated into one of the user's preferred languages, and determines the location in the translated document corresponding to the location of the scan in the original document.
  • the system identifies a small region (e.g., a paragraph) that includes the corresponding location of the scanned location.
  • the corresponding translated location is then presented to the user. This provides the user with a precise translation of the particular usage at the scanned location, including any slang or other idiomatic usage that is often difficult to accurately translate on a word-by-word basis.
  • a user researching a particular topic may encounter all sorts of material, both in print and on screen, which they might wish to record as relevant to the topic in some personal archive.
  • the system would enable this process to be automatic as a result of scanning a short phrase in any piece of material, and could also create a bibliography suitable for insertion into a publication on the subject.
  • Conventional Internet search engines typically provide free search of electronic documents, and also make no charge to the content providers for including their content in the index.
  • the system provides for charges to users and/or payments to search engines and/or content providers in connection with the operation and use of the system.
  • subscribers to the system's services pay a fee for searches originating from scans of paper documents.
  • a stockbroker may be reading a Wall Street Journal article about a new product offered by Company X.
  • the stockbroker uses the system to search special or proprietary databases to obtain premium information about the company, such as analyst's reports.
  • the system can also make arrangements to have priority indexing of the documents most likely to be read in paper form, for example by making sure all of the newspapers published on a particular day are indexed and available by the time they hit the streets.
  • Content providers may pay a fee to be associated with certain terms in search queries submitted from paper documents. For example, in one embodiment, the system chooses a most preferred content provider based on additional context about the provider (the context being, in this case, that the content provider has paid a fee to be moved up the results list). In essence, the search provider is adjusting paper document search results based on pre-existing financial arrangements with a content provider. See also the description of keywords and key phrases in Section 5.2.
  • Such content may be protected by a firewall and thus not generally indexable by third parties.
  • the content provider may nonetheless wish to provide an index to the protected content.
  • the content provider can pay a service provider to provide the content provider's index to system subscribers.
  • a law firm may index all of a client's documents. The documents are stored behind the law firm's firewall.
  • the law firm wants its employees and the client to have access to the documents through the portable scanner so it provides the index (or a pointer to the index) to the service provider, which in turn searches the law firm's index when employees or clients of the law firm submit paper-scanned search terms via their portable scanners.
  • the law firm can provide a list of employees and/or clients to the service provider's system to enable this function or the system can verify access rights by querying the law firm prior to searching the law firm's index.
  • the index provided by the law firm is only of that client's documents, not an index of all documents at the law firm.
  • the service provider can only grant the law firm's clients access to the documents that the law firm indexed for the client.
  • the search function revenue can be generated from paid subscriptions from the scanner users, but can also be generated on a per-search charge.
  • the content delivery revenue can be shared with the content provider or copyright holder (the service provider can take a percentage of the sale or a fixed fee, such as a micropayment, for each delivery), but also can be generated by a "referral" model in which the system gets a fee or percentage for every item that the subscriber orders from the online catalog and that the system has delivered or contributed to, regardless of whether the service provider intermediates the transaction.
  • the system service provider receives revenue for all purchases that the subscriber made from the content provider, either for some predetermined period of time or at any subsequent time when a purchase of an identified product is made.
  • Consumers may use the portable scanner to make purchases from paper catalogs.
  • the subscriber scans information from the catalog that identifies the catalog. This information is text from the catalog, a bar code, or another identifier of the catalog.
  • the subscriber scans information identifying the products that s/he wishes to purchase.
  • the catalog mailing label may contain a customer identification number that identifies the customer to the catalog vendor. If so, the subscriber can also scan this customer identification number.
  • the system acts as an intermediary between the subscriber and the vendor to facilitate the catalog purchase by providing the customer's selection and customer identification number to the vendor.
  • a consumer scans paper coupons and saves an electronic copy of the coupon in the scanner, or in a remote device such as a computer, for later retrieval and use.
  • An advantage of electronic storage is that the consumer is freed from the burden of carrying paper coupons.
  • a further advantage is that the electronic coupons may be retrieved from any location.
  • the system can track coupon expiration dates, alert the consumer about coupons that will expire soon, and/or delete expired coupons from storage.
  • An advantage for the issuer of the coupons is the possibility of receiving more feedback about who is using the coupons and when and where they are captured and used.
  • the system may be used to auto-populate an electronic document that corresponds to a paper form.
  • a user scans in some text or a barcode that uniquely identifies the paper form.
  • the scanner communicates the identity of the form and information identifying the user to a nearby computer.
  • the nearby computer has an Internet connection.
  • the nearby computer can access a first database of forms and a second database having information about the user of the scanner (such as a service provider's subscriber information database).
  • the nearby computer accesses an electronic version of the paper form from the first database and auto-populates the fields of the form from the user's information obtained from the second database.
  • the nearby computer then emails the completed form to the intended recipient.
  • the computer could print the completed form on a nearby printer.
  • the system has a portable scanner that contains the user's information, such as in an identity module, SIM, or security card.
  • the scanner provides information identifying the form to the nearby PC.
  • the nearby PC accesses the electronic form and queries the scanner for any necessary information to fill out the form.
  • the system can be used to automatically populate electronic address books or other contact lists from paper documents. For example, upon receiving a new acquaintance's business card, a user can capture an image of the card with his/her cellular phone. The system will locate an electronic copy of the card, which can be used to update the cellular phone's onboard address book with the new acquaintance's contact information. The electronic copy may contain more information about the new acquaintance than can be squeezed onto a business card. Further, the onboard address book may also store a link to the electronic copy such that any changes to the electronic copy will be automatically updated in the cell phone's address book.
  • the business card optionally includes a symbol or text that indicates the existence of an electronic copy.
  • the cellular phone can use OCR and knowledge of standard business card formats to fill out an entry in the address book for the new acquaintance. Symbols may also aid in the process of extracting information directly from the image. For example, a phone icon next to the phone number on the business card can be recognized to determine the location of the phone number. 19.3. Proofreading/Editing
  • the system can enhance the proofreading and editing process.
  • One way the system can enhance the editing process is by linking the editor's interactions with a paper document to its electronic counterpart.
  • the system will make the appropriate annotations or edits to an electronic counterpart of the paper document. For example, if the editor scans a portion of text and makes the "new paragraph" control gesture with the scanner, a computer in communication with the scanner would insert a "new paragraph” break at the location of the scanned text in the electronic copy of the document.
  • a user can make voice annotations to a document by scanning a portion of text from the document and then making a voice recording that is associated with the scanned text.
  • the scanner has a microphone to record the user's verbal annotations. After the verbal annotations are recorded, the system identifies the document from which the text was scanned, locates the scanned text within the document, and attaches the voice annotation at that point. In some embodiments, the system converts the speech to text and attaches the annotation as a textual comment.
  • the system keeps annotations separate from the document, with only a reference to the annotation kept with the document.
  • the annotations then become an annotation markup layer to the document for a specific subscriber or group of users.
  • the system identifies the document, opens it using a software package, scrolls to the location of the scan and plays the voice annotation. The user can then interact with a document while referring to voice annotations, suggested changes or other comments recorded either by themselves or by somebody else.
  • a markup layer associated with a paper document contains help menu information for the document. For example, when a user scans text from a certain portion of the document, the system checks the markup associated with the document and presents a help menu to the user. The help menu is presented on a display on the scanner or on an associated nearby display.
  • the portable scanner is used to scan information from computer monitors and televisions.
  • the portable optical scanner has an illumination sensor that is optimized to work with traditional cathode ray tube (CRT) display techniques such as rasterizing, screen blanking, etc.
  • CTR cathode ray tube
  • a voice capture device which operates by capturing audio of the user reading text from a document will typically work regardless of whether that document is on paper, on a display, or on some other medium.
  • a public kiosk displays a dynamic session ID on its monitor.
  • the kiosk is connected to a communication network such as the Internet or a corporate intranet.
  • the session ID changes periodically but at least every time that the kiosk is used so that a new session ID is displayed to every user.
  • the subscriber scans in the session ID displayed on the kiosk; by scanning the session ID, the user tells the system that he wishes to temporarily associate the kiosk with his scanner for the delivery of content resulting from scans of printed documents or from the kiosk screen itself.
  • the scanner may communicate the Session ID and other information authenticating the scanner (such as a serial number, account number, or other identifying information) directly to the system.
  • the scanner can communicate directly (where "directly" means without passing the message through the kiosk) with the system by sending the session initiation message through the user's cell phone (which is paired with the user's scanner via BluetoothTM).
  • the scanner can establish a wireless link with the kiosk and use the kiosk's communication link by transferring the session initiation information to the kiosk (perhaps via short range RF such as BluetoothTM, etc.); in response, the kiosk sends the session initiation information to the system via its Internet connection.
  • the system can prevent others from using a device that is already associated with a scanner during the period (or session) in which the device is associated with the scanner. This feature is useful to prevent others from using a public kiosk before another person's session has ended.
  • the user scans a barcode on a monitor of a PC which s/he desires to use; in response, the system sends a session ID to the monitor that it displays; the user initiates the session by scanning the session ID from the monitor (or entering it via a keypad or touch screen or microphone on the portable scanner); and the system associates in its databases the session ID with the serial number (or other identifier that uniquely identifies the user's scanner) of his/her scanner so another scanner cannot scan the session ID and use the monitor during his/her session.
  • the scanner is in communication (through wireless link such as BluetoothTM, a hardwired link such as a docking station, etc.) with a PC associated with the monitor or is in direct (i.e., w/o going through the PC) communication with the system via another means such as a cellular phone, etc.
  • FIG 4 is a block diagram showing typical components of a scanner.
  • This scanner 400 includes at least input and output capabilities 410, a processor 420, memory (e.g. flash memory) 430 for storing data and/or programs, and a power source 440 (e.g. a battery).
  • Figure 5 is a block diagram showing typical components of a scanner in another configuration.
  • Figure 5 shows output 510 (e.g. a display) separately from input 550 embodied here as an image sensor (such as a CMOS image sensor in a digital camera).
  • Figure 6 is a block diagram showing typical components of a scanner in another configuration shows a scanner comprising input and output 610 (e.g.
  • a bluetooth wireless connection a processor 620, memory 630, a power source 640, an image sensor 650, and a location module 660 (e.g. a Global Positioning System capable apparatus). Headings provided in this disclosure are for clarity and navigation and are not to be taken as binding. Optics
  • a scanner may capture a representation of a rendered document with an image sensor behind an aperture.
  • this aperture may have a transparent cover such that a sensor is protected.
  • This covering could be plastic, glass or fiberglass.
  • this covering may be able to focus light.
  • a focusing lens such that the distance from the aperture to a piece of paper may be different than the distance from the aperture to the image sensor.
  • f the focal length of the lens
  • u is from the aperture to a document
  • v is from a sensor to the aperture.
  • FIG 7. Other embodiments might use more than one focusing lens, or a lens not located in this aperture.
  • reflective surfaces such as a mirror, may be used.
  • a scanner may include an image sensor.
  • an image sensor would be with a CMOS (computer chip transistor technology) image sensor. Such a sensor may be able to photograph a backlit display such as a computer monitor.
  • CMOS computer chip transistor technology
  • CCD Charge Coupled Device
  • a button may be used to start the scanning process. Such a button could be placed so it is easily activated by a user.
  • a button may protrude from this scanner such that it is depressed when this scanner is likely above content.
  • Figure 8 is a schematic diagram showing switches incorporated in the scanner in some embodiments, shown in Figure 8, the scanner 800 may have a user button 810 and a proximity button 820. In this diagram, both are bolded and shaded for visibility.
  • a proximity button's sensor may be inside the scanner, so that the protruding element may be moved into contact with a sensor as the scanner is moved into contact with a document 840.
  • a sensor may be employed to detect proximity to a scanning target. Once triggered, a camera may take different length series of images at different frequencies. In one embodiment, a scanner may only take a single image. In another embodiment, images may be captured many times a second as long as a sensor is activated (much like a video camera). Optionally, a scanner may have a light to assist in capturing images.
  • This scanner may use storage capabilities, such as computer memory, for varied purposes.
  • an embodiment of these storage capabilities may be referred to as "memory” for clarity, but this terminology is not to be taken as binding.
  • it may be: Static, Dynamic, a multiple Data Rate (e.g. Double or Quad) Random Access Memory (SRAM, DRAM, DDR- DRAM, QDR-DRAM, respectively), a Read Only Memory, Flash Memory, Secure Digital Input/Output (SDIO), CompactFlash, a hard disk drive, Magnetic Memory (e.g. TMJ-RAM), FRAM, Compact Disc, Digital Video Disc, tape storage, USB key or other computer readable or processor accessible storage.
  • SRAM Double or Quad
  • SDIO Secure Digital Input/Output
  • CompactFlash CompactFlash
  • a hard disk drive Magnetic Memory
  • Magnetic Memory e.g. TMJ-RAM
  • FRAM Compact Disc
  • Digital Video Disc Digital Video Disc
  • tape storage e.g. USB key or other computer readable or processor accessible storage.
  • USB key e.g., USB key or other computer readable or
  • a scanner may have a small hard disk drive for scan results and SRAM for a high speed cache.
  • storage may not be contained within a scanner.
  • a scanner may use a serial connection to a computer to store and retrieve data.
  • This storage may be used to record images captured from image sensors. Storage, not necessarily the same device, may also be used in converting these images to formats such as text. Such a process may require multiple steps, and these intermediate results go into and out of memory. Storage may also be used for recording results of interactions, such as the text of a scan, a combination of an annotation and text, or images that a user designates.
  • an image sensor may automatically place new images into memory.
  • only some information captured may be of value, and the rest may be deleted or compressed. One example would be deleting images once the scanned text has been determined. Another approach would be storing images that may not contain all of the information captured. Examples include compression formats such as GIF or JPG.
  • an image sensor may be able to capture 24 bits of color information (i.e. distinguish more than 16 million different colors). It may be that this exemplary scanner only needs to be able to distinguish between white, probably white, probably black and black (2 bits). This reduction, from 24 to 2 bits, may save almost 92% of this space.
  • a scanner may have a power source. This may be used to provide electricity to components of a scanner. Some sources may store energy. One example is a battery that uses a chemical reaction to free electrons. These electrons then flow through connections to points with a lower electric potential. A gravitational analogue may be water at the top of a hill, which may flow downhill towards points with less gravitational potential. Another approach may be to have a power source that is not wholly or primarily contained in this scanner. An example would be plugging this scanner into a wall outlet. Another example would be plugging this scanner into a USB outlet such that the host device provides power to the scanner via this power source. In one embodiment, a fuel cell may be used to generate electricity.
  • a fuel cell consists of an anode, cathode, membrane and a catalyst.
  • the cathode may have paths etched in it filled with oxygen so that oxygen is distributed over this surface of the cathode.
  • the anode has pathways with hydrogen
  • the catalyst begins a reaction between the hydrogen and oxygen.
  • the membrane ensures that electrons are not able to go directly across (i.e. between the anode and cathode) and therefore must go through a circuit and provide an electric current to the scanner.
  • a power source may incorporate other parts to be able to provide power.
  • Some scanner components may be designed to receive Alternating Current (AC) whereas a power source component, such as a battery, may produce Direct Current (DC).
  • An electrical device known as an inverter may be employed to accomplish this.
  • a power source may be intended to deliver different voltages to different components.
  • One way of doing this might be to use resistors, or other current limiters forming a voltage divider. Another way of doing this might be use separate inverters such that each different voltage is produced by a different inverter.
  • a power source may also use fuses or other surge protection circuitry.
  • a scanner may be able to output information. This may allow a scanner to store scan results elsewhere, communicate to a user, or signify that something is wrong.
  • This output may be a display, such as an LED or LCD. These types of displays may be found in calculators, digital clocks, cellular phones and other portable electronics.
  • Some output maybe to another device, such as a wired, wireless or other communications medium. In such an embodiment, a user may need to use a monitor associated with this other device to view information. Examples of wired connections include: RS-232; PS/2; serial; USB; ethernet; token ring; printer connections (IEEE 1284); firewire; RJ45 (telephone line); homeplug and fiber optics.
  • wireless connections include: wireless ethernet (e.g. IEEE 802.11a,b,g); bluetooth; infra-red (IrDA, such as in a television remote control); Ultra wideband; frequency or amplitude modulated signaling (such as in FM/AM radio); analog broadcasts (such as television); PCS; GSM; GPRS; OFDM; CDMA; TDMA; FDMA; ZigBee; wireless 1394; BLAST (from Bell Labs); homeRF; and TD-SCDMA (a Chinese standard).
  • wireless ethernet e.g. IEEE 802.11a,b,g
  • IrDA infra-red
  • Ultra wideband frequency or amplitude modulated signaling
  • analog broadcasts such as television
  • CD-ROMs CD-ROMs, DVDs, floppy diskettes, SDIO, memory stick, compact flash, usb keys), PCI, PCI-X, PCI-Express, IDE and SCSI.
  • Other types of output may be auditory (e.g. a piezoelectric speaker), haptic (including a cell phone's vibrate), or other sensory output.
  • the scanner uses output to communicate with a user. For example, a user may be notified that a battery is running low on power. In this embodiment, a chemical battery is periodically checked with a voltmeter. Once this reading drops below a threshold, the power source may notify a central processor by an interrupt. This processor may then save its current state and switch to handling this interrupt. This interrupt may begin a routine, or series of instructions from memory, to command the processor to signal a particular display (e.g. a low battery light). This processor may then use a system bus to send data to this display. This display may then interpret this data as a command to turn on.
  • a user may be notified that a battery is running low on power.
  • a chemical battery is periodically checked with a voltmeter. Once this reading drops below a threshold, the power source may notify a central processor by an interrupt. This processor may then save its current state and switch to handling this interrupt. This interrupt may begin a routine, or series of instructions from memory, to command the processor to signal a particular display (e.
  • output may be used to signal that a user ought to rescan; that a connection (e.g. bluetooth) has been detected and is now connected; that this scanner is turned on; which gesture has been detected, or which mode this scanner is in; previous scan results (e.g. text or possibly a document name), possibly based on metadata; how much memory is left; or information such as time of last scan.
  • a scanner may simply vibrate if a scan needs to be rescanned. If a user would like to view previous scans, they may have to use a USB connection to upload the scans in memory to a device that can display this data such as a personal computer.
  • a scanner processor loads from memory a series of instructions to operate an output device. These instructions may command this processor to engage an output device by communicating over a system bus or other connection. This processor may then send data to this output device. This output device, if a connection, may then format the data and send it out. If this output device is a display, this data may be interpreted and then rendered. For example, if an LED display is used, this display may, in one embodiment, receive data from the processor. This data may then be used to address into a lookup table (i.e. Read Only Memory). This lookup table may then produce electrical signals to control which LEDs on this display are on and which are off. If the data sent is the ASCII code for a lower case s, this lookup table may return results from the address range designed to be this letter. These signals may then create a pattern recognizable as a lower case 's' on the display.
  • the output may include at least one LED to notify a user that they may stop scanning.
  • Figure 9 is a schematic diagram showing a visual output component incorporated into the scanner in some embodiments in a first state.
  • Figure 9 shows an early stage of a scan.
  • the box 900 is used to illustrate which text has been scanned, such a mark may not appear to a user.
  • This embodiment of a scanner has a LED 930 that is not emitting light.
  • Figure 10 is a schematic diagram showing a visual output component incorporated into the scanner in some embodiments in a second state. Later, in Figure 10 this LED 1030 has been activated. In this diagram, more text has been scanned, as represented by the larger box 1000.
  • Figure 11 is a flow diagram showing steps typically performed by the system to monitor a scan for completeness.
  • a new gesture is detected 1110. This process is described elsewhere in this application, but an illustrative example would be when a user starts scanning forwards.
  • the next step 1120 records new information. This information may be from an image sensor.
  • a processor may decide whether or not this scan is unique 1130. In some embodiments, this may simply be a guess, where this scan has met constraints to give it perhaps a 99% chance of being unique. In some embodiments this may occur through parameterized information. For example, a scanner may be programmed that eight words are unique (where a "word" is a series of characters between spaces).
  • Another approach may be 6 words that are all longer than 3 characters. Another approach may be to determine that a scan is unique after 5 inches. Another approach might be to declare a scan unique after 40 characters. These examples are illustrative and not necessarily guaranteed to produce 99% correct results. Another approach may be to use another scanner output to send this scan data to a machine that returns whether or not this scan is unique. Another approach may be to store enough documents, particularly text fragments, to be able to predict if this scan is unique. Another way that a scan may be determined to be unique is if some embedded data is found, such as a two dimensional barcode, that is designed to convey uniquely identifying information.
  • this process returns to 1120 where more scan data is collected. If this scan is unique, this iteration continues to 1140 where the scan may be processed. This is not to say that all scan processing occurs at this stage. Some processing that may occur at this stage may include turning on an LED to notify the user that this scan has been determined to be unique. Some data after this point may not be stored, or an image sensor may collect less data (e.g. recording images at a lower resolution or frequency). In some embodiments, some data may be collected such that this scanner can record where this scan ended. In some embodiments, a scanner may stop recording once a scan is unique. In some embodiments, scan processing 1140 may initiate a process, or segment, of determining which characters have been imaged. Processor
  • Processing capabilities in this scanner may be used for: triggering a sensor; processing sensor output, particularly images; compression and other image manipulation; caching algorithms and other functions associated with memory; communications; interfacing with other modules or functions related to security.
  • a processor coordinates the overall operation of the scanner.
  • a processor operates from a program that is stored in memory.
  • memory may store program instructions about storage and processing of data acquired by an optical sensor.
  • this processor may trigger an optical sensor.
  • This processor may then move the collected data to memory.
  • a direct memory access chip may be able to control or direct movement of data from an optical sensor to memory.
  • a processor may then retrieve from memory instructions for storing and processing this data.
  • a processor may treat incoming signals as either data signals or control signals.
  • a data signal may contain a number or an address in memory.
  • a control signal may contain information such as an operation to perform.
  • these control signals may be stored in a list, much like a recipe for cooking. Like a recipe for cooking, these data signals form ingredients, control signals act as steps, this internal memory, or cache, may act as a cutting board or other easily accessible place to keep ingredients, and units for performing math may be equivalent to a food processor.
  • a processor may retrieve the first instruction containing a control signal and two data signals. This control signal may instruct the processor to read in data from memory at the addresses contained in the first two data signals. In one embodiment, this information may be stored in a memory built into this processor. The next control signal may instruct this processor to add these two numbers together. This processor may perform this addition and then return a result to its cache. A final control signal may direct this processor to store this result in memory. In this fashion a processor may be able to use control and data signals to perform operations.
  • a processor may retrieve an image captured by an optical sensor and perform traditional Optical Character Recognition (OCR) techniques to determine which characters, if any, appear in this image.
  • OCR Optical Character Recognition
  • this processor may be able to create or interact with data and data about data, known as metadata.
  • Metadata An example of metadata would be storing the time at which a picture was taken.
  • a processor may trigger a camera. This processor may then store this picture to memory. This processor may also query a system clock to determine what the current time is. This processor may then store the current time in a memory location following the last location devoted to this picture. In some cases, in this embodiment, an error code may be stored instead of a time stamp perhaps if something went wrong. Later, software in memory may instruct this processor to perform some computations on this picture. This software may also be written with the knowledge that the location following the end of the picture contains a time stamp.
  • This software may then be able to work with not only a picture, but also the time that the picture was taken.
  • this may be implemented in a computer language such as C or C++ using a data structure implemented with the keyword "struct.” For instance, this processor could be instructed to delete all pictures taken on a Monday.
  • this time stamp may record day of the week. If Monday is represented by a '1' in this field, a processor may be able to retrieve the data in this field for each picture. If a picture is found to have a one in this field, then this processor may instruct the memory to erase (or allow to be written over) the memory contained in addresses currently storing the picture in question.
  • metadata may be stored indirectly. For example, instead of storing a time stamp for each scan, scans may be placed in memory in chronological order. Another example may be placing items in a memory location wherein this address corresponds to certain information.
  • a processor may compress a scanned image before determining what text is contained. Some other scanners may determine what text is contained, possibly with OCR, and then compress the results. Some other scanners may simply compress an image, possibly with an algorithm such as JPEG, but not determine what text is in this image. Other embodiments of a scanner may decompress an image before determining which text is contained. For example, there may be a picture of a string of text in memory. A processor may segment this image character by character. To do this, a processor may first determine which parts of an image constitute a character. This may involve finding a perimeter of black dots in a white field. A processor may then compare these segments to each other in order to compress this image.
  • a goal of this compression may be to list where characters are repeated without information as to which character is in an image. For instance, a result may indicate that the first character scanned is unique to this image, the second character is repeated in the sixth and eighth position, and so on. But, this result would not have information as to what this first or second character may be.
  • this processor may store each segment of an image containing a character as a separate image. This processor may then retrieve the first and second images and compare them to see if they are the same character. One way of doing this may be to subtract the images from each other. Each pixel's color may be represented by a number, in ascending order of darkness.
  • each character may be segmented based on the vectors that form it. These vectors may then be stored as data. Then, instead of comparing images, a processor may simply compare vectors. Again, this may be done by subtracting. To illustrate, vectors may be thought of as line segments of different, but fixed, lengths. Each vector points in a particular direction. Subtraction occurs when two vectors are placed at the same starting location. A third vector is formed from the endpoint of the first vector to the endpoint of the second vector.
  • this processor may write to memory whether or not this second character matches the first character. This processor may then compare this first image to a third character and repeat this process. This processor may compare each new character to each unique character. This processor may then end up with a list of numerals such as 1232456783692 (representing the word 'determinative'). The first character has been assigned 1 , the second character 2, and so forth. Where a character has been seen before, such as the second 'e', it is assigned the number of the first 'e', i.e. 2.
  • this processor may store only 13 characters. These character strings may be decompressed. In one embodiment, only the text will be recovered, not relative offsets of where these characters appeared on the page. Because not all of the information gathered may be stored, the stored information may be smaller than the original image. One way to decompress this image would be to treat this string of numbers as an address into a list of word combinations. If a long enough string is used, only one result may be found. In some embodiments different length text strings may be stored such that these offsets may be converted. In some embodiments, metadata may be used to return results that are more likely than others. In some embodiments, these text strings may be words in a given language. In some embodiments a processor may use instructions from memory to iterate through different possible text strings that may result in this combination of offsets.
  • FIG. 12 is a flow diagram showing steps typically performed by the system in order to perform symbolic compression.
  • the first step 1210 ends with the scanned image in memory.
  • a processor may trigger an image sensor.
  • This processor may respond to an acknowledgment of this sensor by issuing commands to move image data from this sensor to memory.
  • the processor analyzes this image data. It may use techniques from art relating to optical character recognition such as white space analysis or characterization, vector or blob analysis, a width based approach or other techniques to determine which parts of an image form a character.
  • the following step 1230 is where the processor loads the first character representation from memory.
  • the processor will compare this character to characters in the cache. Being the first character, the cache will be empty.
  • this iteration proceeds to 1250 where this character is added to the cache.
  • the processor may write this representation to memory, and may store data enabling it to find this data again. This may be implemented as a linked list or as an array (with a variable signifying length).
  • 1260 may output this identifier to two places. A first step in one embodiment of this process is this identifier will be added to the output stream. Because this is the first character, the output is of zero length. This identifier will also be stored with the character representation in cache so that if this character is found again, it can be identified.
  • 1280 the processor loads from memory data to determine if there are more characters. Assuming there are, this process returns to 1230.
  • Figure 13 is a state diagram showing the evolving state of the symbolic compression process while processing a scan capturing the word "determinative.”
  • Each line (containing a letter, parentheses, and a number) is representative of an iteration. The color red is used to indicate new data in this iteration.
  • a red character denotes which character has been read in.
  • In the middle column is a representation of the cache. Inside the parentheses are the unique characters that have been previously seen. In the first row, for the letter d, this is empty. The column on the right is a running record of the output stream.
  • the red numbers are being added on the right because each new character is further to the right than the previous characters. Sometimes this number is larger than any previous one.
  • identifiers are produced in numeric ascending order. Sometimes a number is repeated. This means that this character initially appeared at the location held by the earlier identifier. In this example, the letter 'e' appears three times, but all share the identifier '2' because the first 'e' was assigned a '2'.
  • the identifiers have been described as numerals, but this is not a requirement. Further, these identifiers do not need to be in an order.
  • a processor may be used to check that a identifier is unique.
  • Figure 14 is a flow diagram showing steps typically performed by the system to determine character offsets within an image captured during a scan. To illustrate, this process may be envisioned as sliding an image of text across itself. This process begins 1410 after a sensor image has captured an image. A processor in this scanner may create a queue of pixels to compare with this original image. This queue may be vertical slices of a copy of this original image. Another approach may be to use address pointers to keep track of which vertical slices are to be compared, and then create temporary copies of these slices in the processor. The following step 1420 compares one length. Length refers to a horizontal width of a vertical slice. This may be one pixel, or multiple pixels. It may be heuristically determined based on whitespace.
  • This slice may be the entire image. This slice is compared to slices from an original image. This may be done by comparing this slice sequentially to slices from an original. In one embodiment, this comparison slice is sequentially compared to a corresponding slice one step over. A step may be the same distance as a horizontal width. A step may be a pixel or multiple pixels. In the following stage of this process 1430, this processor records to memory where this image matches itself. This data may contain which vertical slices match other vertical slices of this original image. A matching section may or may not be a character (e.g. it might be two characters that only appear in order). The next step 1440 is to determine if this comparison is complete. Comparison does not necessarily refer to one slice, but to this larger process. One way to determine if this comparison is complete if there are no more slices to compare.
  • Figure 15 is a convolution diagram showing one way to visualize this process. This shows a step by step breakdown of using a single slice to find character offsets. The exemplary steps are numbered, such as the 1 1500 shown. Lines 1510 are used to separate the steps. An image of the word determinative is being compared. On the left is a slice 1520 and on the right is a copy 1530 in memory. When an overlap is found, this illustration designates this with a triangle 1540.
  • Figure 16 is a further convolution diagram. Here, the slice copy 1620 is shown above the copy in memory 1630 so that it may be clearer why a match is found 1640.
  • Figure 17 is a flow diagram showing steps typically performed by the system in order to record subsegmented segments.
  • one difficulty may be in determining which parts of an image are a character.
  • One approach may be to subdivide this image into sections that have a discrete number of characters.
  • this process may be iteratively completed as matches are found, or may be started after all matches have been found.
  • this image is one segment, i.e. an image of a discrete number of characters (this image may be cropped to the section enclosed in whitespace).
  • the next section 1720 sees if there are more matching subsections to process. If there are no more, then this process may terminate 1770, but if there are then this iteration proceeds to the following step 1730.
  • this section 1730 these sections are recorded.
  • One dimensional location measurements may be sent to memory.
  • One way to associate these segments with their matching counterparts is to use an identifier.
  • Another approach is to store them in memory such that their relative locations provide information as to how they match (e.g. each matching pair is stored sequentially, and odd numbered matches have one repeated region such that there is an even number).
  • the next step 1740 determines if any of these matching segments overlap with any segment. This may be where one segment entirely encompasses another, or where only a section of each overlaps.
  • these segments may be subdivided. This may occur where a first segment has multiple characters and a second segment has smaller number of these characters.
  • a first matched segment may contain "ing" and a second segment may contain "in.” This process may then subdivide these into segments containing "in” (i.e. what was matched) and "g" (i.e. what was left). If all segments begin with a discrete number of characters, removing a discrete number of characters will also leave a discrete number of characters.
  • each of these segments may be stored as the largest segment that is either completely overlapped or entirely free of overlap. This process may be similar to when locations are stored 1730. In one embodiment, the same system of correlating matching segments is used. After this process, an original image will have a number of matching segments identified.
  • Space between these segments may then be treated as new segments that do not match any other segment. It may be that each character has its own segment.
  • character analysis techniques such as blob analysis or connectedness analysis may be used to further subdivide segments. These segments may then be used to determine the text on which they are based. In one embodiment, these segments are represented as offsets, and these offsets are used to look up which text would produce these offsets.
  • the storage that contains this information may be populated with data that can account for segments containing multiple characters.
  • a scanner may be able to have another device plugged into it, such as a GPS module.
  • This device may also be susceptible to a handheld form factor.
  • This device may have a self-contained power supply. This device may use power from this scanner's power source.
  • This device may have separate processing capabilities. This device may be connected and disconnected by hand and without tools.
  • a device may provide further functionality to a scanner. For example, a device may store financial information such that this scanner is able to interact with a credit card processor.
  • a central processor for a scanner may detect that a button has been pushed to authorize a financial transaction. This processor may then check its memory to determine the starting address in memory for the control signals to carry out this process.
  • the first instruction may direct this processor to notify the device with credit card information.
  • this processor may simply send an instruction to this device over this direct connection.
  • a command from the processor may be received by every part of the scanner, e.g. the memory, the image sensor, the power unit and the device.
  • a command from this processor may specify that it is for the device. One way to do this would be to use the first bits of a command.
  • Each combination of bit settings, e.g. 101 , 110, 001 may be assigned to a different part of this scanner.
  • the device with credit card information may receive this command.
  • This device may respond to the processor instructing it to connect to some type of financial clearinghouse. This may be by providing a telephone number, a Uniform Resource Locator, an Internet Protocol address, or by referring the processor to software already in memory.
  • This processor may then establish a connection with the clearinghouse. This may happen with a wireless internet connection.
  • a processor may first issue a command to energize an antenna in a wireless radio (or antennae, for example, in multiple-in multiple-out antenna schemes). This wireless radio may then attempt to detect a wireless network. If such a connection is detected, this radio may notify the processor that a network has been detected, and that the radio is ready to transceive. The processor may then begin to send out data.
  • the processor may load into its cache instructions for how to complete the requested financial transaction. Some of these instructions may require the processor to receive information from the device. The processor may request such data, and then send it to the clearinghouse over the wireless internet connection established by the radio.
  • the connection to the clearinghouse may be created with a device not a part of the scanner. For example, the scanner may have a bluetooth radio.
  • Such a radio may not be able to send information to the clearinghouse by itself, but may be able to connect to a cellular phone.
  • This cellular phone may be able to establish an internet connection or simply place a phone call to this clearinghouse.
  • the scanner may be connected via wire to a personal computer.
  • This personal computer may be able to establish a connection with this clearinghouse, possibly over a modem or ethernet card.
  • a scanner may be able to detect gestures.
  • a gesture is a scanning motion, or series of motions, where these motions serve as commands or other data beyond which images to capture.
  • a gesture is a scanning motion, or series of motions, where these motions serve as commands or other data beyond which images to capture.
  • One example might be if a user circles text. Images within this circle may have metadata associated specifying that these images were in a circle. When reviewing results, circled images may be denoted as important. Another example would be if a user scans backwards over something previously scanned. This may instruct a scanner to erase this previous scan.
  • Gestures may be composed of smaller gestures. For example, repeatedly scanning back and forth over content may be interpreted as a single rubbing motion (possibly denoting importance) rather than a series of discrete gestures.
  • a scanner may detect the start of a gesture, followed by identifying this gesture, followed by detecting the end of this gesture. This scanner may then associate a target of this gesture with metadata
  • a gesture may be started whenever motion is detected and this scanner is not already in an elemental gesture.
  • One way to detect motion is to compare sequentially captured images, much like an optical mouse.
  • a first image may be analyzed for patterns.
  • a processor will use software instructions to bring this image into memory and then find parts of this image that differ from a background. This processor may then record to memory where these patterns were located and what they were. This processor may then load a second image and attempt to detect these original patterns. This processor may then compare how the locations of these patterns may have changed from the first image. The difference may be encoded as vectors. By repeating this process, a series of vectors may be formed.
  • a processor may directly compare the first and second image, similar to technology employed in optical mice. This processor may, in one embodiment, find vectors between pixels (or some representative pixels) in the first and second image. This processor may then move all of the pixels in the first image one pixel to the right (with some pixels no longer being part of this image). This processor may then recalculate these vectors. If these vectors are shorter, this processor may continue moving pixels to the right until there is no horizontal distance between pixels. If these vectors are longer, this processor may begin moving pixels to the left. This process may be repeated along a vertical or other axis.
  • the start of a gesture may be followed by an effort to classify this motion.
  • the complexity of this step may depend on which classifications exist. For example, if a scanner only recognizes one gesture, e.g. backwards, classification efforts may not need to consider any vertical components of motion.
  • motion may be represented as a vector, or a series of vectors.
  • vectors may be replaced by a single representative vector as described herein. For instance, if a user is attempting to scan perfectly horizontally, but instead oscillates vertically a little, a scanner may be able to determine that this user intended a horizontal line, and replace the myriad vectors with one horizontal one.
  • this scanner recognizes forward, backward, up, down, circling and diagonal. It may be that each of these vector's horizontal components have matching polarities (e.g. backwards), but the vertical components may have different polarities (i.e. up and down). Further, it may be that no vector varies from the horizontal axis by more than 15 degrees (out of 360).
  • This processor may load the appropriate images into its cache to be analyzed. This processor may then use instructions from memory to determine the series of motion vectors followed. This processor may then store these vectors in memory. This processor may then retrieve further software instructions to process these vectors. This processor may then compare these horizontal and vertical components with zero to determine their polarities.
  • This processor may divide the absolute value of a vertical component by the absolute value of the horizontal component. This may then be compared with the arctangent of 15 degrees (approximately 0.27) to determine if this vector is within 15 degrees. This processor may then remove from memory the short vectors and simply replace them with one vector whose horizontal component spans the entire length and whose vertical component is zero.
  • a scanner may be able to combine gestures into other gestures.
  • a scanner may recognize forward, backward and rubbing (back and forth).
  • the motions used to make a rubbing motion may be individually detected as gestures.
  • Figure 18 is a flow diagram showing steps typically performed by the system in order to recognize "combination gestures" that are performed by performing a series of constituent gestures.
  • the forward motion is detected, an in 1810 it is identified as forward, as discussed elsewhere.
  • In 1820 it is added to a gesture group.
  • this embodiment has only one gesture group (though other embodiments may have more) and this group is classified sequentially (though other embodiments may group gestures based on other properties).
  • this single forward motion is not a combination gesture, so this iteration proceeds to 1850. From here, another gesture may be found 1810.
  • a processor may retrieve a variable from memory to determine if how many, if any, gestures are in a queue.
  • a processor may also retrieve memory from a linked list by visiting a known address. Because there is a new gesture, this process returns to 1810.
  • This next gesture will be identified as a single backwards motion. In 1820 this is added to the one group in memory.
  • this processor may try to determine if a combination gesture exists. In this example, the only combination gestures are forward, backwards, forwards and backwards, forward, backwards.
  • a "tree" may be stored in memory outlining these combination gestures.
  • a processor could access a root node at a predetermined location and retrieve a data structure listing elemental gestures. Each gesture would point to an address, or addresses, of possible next gestures. This branching structure is known as a tree. The processor from this example may trace forward, backwards and not arrive at a terminal symbol. Thus, this process continues to 1850 and then onto 1810. There, the next gesture is identified as a forward gesture and then 1820 added to the one group. This time 1830 will identify this sequence as rubbing and then 1840 replace the three separate gestures with one rubbing gesture.
  • a combination gesture may not be a fixed pattern.
  • rubbing may be defined as at least one repetition of forwards, backwards, or backwards, forwards.
  • combination gestures may form components of other combination gestures.
  • a scanner may recognize circling, rubbing and rubbing then circling.
  • a scanner may need to associate a relative direction in an image with a direction relative to a document. For instance, a scanner may want to classify scans to the left as backwards.
  • a scanner may use two image sensors to be able to determine a direction relative to a document by assuming that a document is "right side up" and then using an absolute direction.
  • an absolute direction may be determined by using two image sensors placed next to each other. Such a scanner may be able to determine a direction relative to an image from each and an absolute direction by comparing these two (and possibly by having stored how images move between these sensors based on scanner orientation).
  • Another approach may be to have something (e.g.
  • a stick, dot of light, proximity sensor obscure a small part of an image sensor such that an absolute direction may be determined.
  • Another approach to finding a direction relative to a document may be by scanning an image (such as a 2-D barcode, edge of a document or known character) where this scanner has stored which part of this image is up (or down, left, right, or other direction). In some embodiments this information may be manually input by a user.
  • One way of determining which direction is backwards may be to total the horizontal components of all scans by this scanner, and then deem the larger of left to right or right to left as forward and the other as backwards. This may also be done over a window of scans.
  • a scanner may simply total the last 5 or 10 scans. This may allow a processor to perform fewer computations or allow a scanner to more accurately predict if a user has switched languages (and such a language is written in a different direction). Some content may use serifs, which are small lines extending from the ends of some characters. In one embodiment, a scanner may detect vectors in this size range and compare the direction of these to determine which direction is forward. Another approach may be to have some embodiments with a fixed direction forward. If a user only reads languages that move in one direction, it may be more efficient if they have a scanner that does not compute, and therefore does not mistake, which direction is being scanned. Some users may want an embodiment in which a switch is used to set a direction as forward.
  • Figure 19 is a flow diagram showing steps typically performed by the system, to detect a backwards motion
  • This process starts when a new elemental gesture is detected 1900.
  • a new elemental gesture is detected 1900.
  • One example of this would be moving a scanner to a document, or turning on a scanner that is already near a document.
  • the next step 1910 is to detect a direction.
  • this may be finding a series of vectors through consecutive images of a distinguishing mark. Once a direction has been found, this iteration may consider if this direction is backwards 1920. Some aspects of this are disclosed in the preceding paragraph. If this direction is not backwards, this process returns to 1900 and waits until a new gesture begins. This process may then repeat to check this new gesture.
  • this stage may store this scan with metadata denoting it as backwards.
  • a scanner in this stage may simply reverse this image such that it may be processed as though it was a forward scan.
  • this process may occur by switching image slices.
  • this image as a series of N one pixel wide vertical slices.
  • a slice in position 0 may be switched with the slice in position N - 1 (the last slice).
  • a scanner processor may store this result in a gesture group.
  • Another aspect of classifying motion may be detecting if an area has previously been scanned. This may be useful in detecting a circular motion (i.e. where this circle is completed) or in starting a new gesture (e.g. in a series of back and forth strokes).
  • One way to detect a previously scanned image is by matching patterns of pixels.
  • pixels may be grouped into patterns, like a constellation or forming a larger shape (e.g. pixels in the shape of the letter 'd'). It may be that a processor finds a pattern representative of each corner of an image and then sorts these images, possibly by number of pixels. Later images may have patterns detected and matched (as described elsewhere) with earlier patterns in memory.
  • Another approach may be for a processor to add motion vectors together to determine if a vector ever crosses another vector, particularly the starting point of the first vector.
  • Figure 20 is a gesture diagram showing samples to detect that a user has made a circle gesture. This process begins when a new elemental gesture is detected 2000. This process then detects if this gesture has intersected itself 2010. In one embodiment, a user may use a wheel to dial in how close two segments of a gesture need to be in order to be considered intersecting. In another embodiment, this value may be hardwired.
  • Figure 21 is a gesture diagram showing sample attempts at performing a circle gesture. The first gesture 2100 intersects at 2110. In this example, the beginning and the end of this motion actually cross over each other, and therefore may be detected as an intersection. The second gesture 2120, shows a gesture that may be determined to be a circle. The beginning and end come nearest to each other at 2130.
  • the third gesture 2140 illustrates a gesture that may not be considered a circle.
  • the distance between the two nearest points 2150, 2160 may be too far to be considered an intersection (though some embodiments may be programmed to accept even this).
  • a scanner may be programmed to not consider certain regions for intersection until this scanner has left them. In some embodiments, this may prevent a scanner from detecting an intersection between two consecutive points. If this gesture has intersected itself, this process of detecting a circle continues in Figure 20 at 2020 where the vertical component is considered. If this gesture has not intersected itself, this iteration returns to await a new gesture.
  • a vertical component may be considered to ensure that this gesture is not a rubbing gesture, which a user may not want to have interpreted as a circle.
  • vertical component may be the difference between the highest and lowest points reached. In one embodiment, this stage may be determined by comparing this difference to a threshold. If this vertical component is not large enough, this process may return to await another gesture. If this component has been met, this process continues to 2030 where a horizontal component may be considered. In some embodiments, this process may mirror that of the vertical component process. If a gesture has met all three of these criteria (intersection, vertical and horizontal) it may be classified as a circle 2040. Whenever an iteration determines that one of these criteria is not met, the process returns to 2000 to await a new gesture.
  • the encircled text may be stored with metadata denoting this.
  • only strings of characters bounded by a space character on each end (e.g. complete words) may be saved with metadata denoting a circle.
  • a scanner may only store images (as opposed to data for determining text) if a circle has been made.
  • Figure 22 is a flow diagram showing steps typically performed by the system to detect a rubbing gesture. In some embodiments, this may be a back and forth type motion. In some embodiments, scanning up, down and then up may be considered rubbing. In this process a new elemental gesture is started 2200. The next stage of this process is to detect a direction, as is described elsewhere 2210. This iteration proceeds to detect a direction change 2220. In some embodiments, this may be defined as a motion that cannot be described by extending the current vector. In some embodiments this may be defined as vectors that can not be described with a single representative vector. This process may stay at this stage 2220 until a new direction is detected. In some embodiments, ending a scan (e.g.
  • this process determines if this new direction is reverse. In some embodiments, this may be defined as a new vector that is between 170 and 190 degrees in a different direction (where 180 is exactly the opposite direction). In some embodiments, an incoming or outgoing vector, or both, may need to be of a minimum length. In some embodiments, this direction change may be defined as an intersection where either the horizontal or vertical component is not large enough to be a circle.
  • this process returns to its initial state 2200 to await a new gesture. If this new direction is reverse, then this iteration proceeds to 2240 to detect another direction change. This step may be performed in a manner similar to the other step labeled "Detect direction change" 2220. From there, this iteration may proceed to 2250 where it may be determined that this new direction is the reverse of the second. In some embodiments, this third direction may not be parallel to the first direction. For example, if a direction within fifteen degrees of 180 is considered reverse, these first and third directions may differ by 30 degrees. In some embodiments, this step may be implemented in a fashion similar to the other step labeled "Is this direction reverse?" 2230.
  • this new direction is the reverse of the second this process continues to 2260 where the gesture is treated as rubbing. In one embodiment, this may comprise including metadata with other data from this scan. If a direction is determined to not be the reverse of a previous direction 2230, 2250 this process returns to 2200. Backwards to Erase
  • a forward scan may be trigger a scanner to store this scan. If this scan, or a section of it, is later scanned with a backwards gesture, this embodiment may remove this second scan target from memory.
  • Figure 23 is a schematic diagram showing a first point in an example of the performance of the backward slash scanning gesture.
  • a scanner 2300 is above a page of text 2310. When this scanner is moved to the right, text is captured from the page.
  • Figure 24 is a schematic diagram showing a second point in an example of the performance of the backward slash scanning gesture.
  • Figure 24 shows a box of text 2400 that may have been captured from a document 2410.
  • Figure 25 is a schematic diagram showing a third point in an example of the performance of the backward slash scanning gesture.
  • Figure 25 shows a scanner 2500 moving in the opposite direction 2510 across this document 2520.
  • the first box 2530 is still shown and now a second box 2540 is shown.
  • This second box 2540 shows the text that may have been selected as the scanner makes its second motion.
  • This second box is also shown for illustrative purposes, and is unlikely to be displayed to a user. Further, this box's height is larger than the first box's to clarify the overlap, not to signify that a second motion collects more image data than the first.
  • text enclosed in both the first and second scan regions may be deleted from memory.
  • the entire scan may be deleted.
  • this data may simply be flagged that it can be overwritten, but not necessarily erased.
  • a rubbing or back and forth gesture is interpreted as highlighting.
  • a user may make a series of scans with a forward gesture and designate one scan target with a rubbing gesture.
  • a user who retrieves these scans may see this document with the rubbed scan highlighted (e.g. this text is on a brightly colored field) and the other text unmarked.
  • text that was denoted with a forwards gesture may be underlined.
  • gestures may be matched with any of a number of results.
  • gestures may include combinations of horizontal, vertical or diagonal motions. Some motions may be curved. As disclosed herein, some motions may be described in terms of their component vectors. By analyzing these component vectors, some embodiments may be able to differentiate between straight and curved lines, or detect squiggles. Some embodiments may recognize "X" shaped gestures (i.e. a pair of diagonal lines crossing within 15 degrees of orthogonality). One embodiment may determine that a "T" gesture selects an entire paragraph as a scan. In some embodiments a straight or slightly curved vertical line in a margin (i.e.
  • a gesture may associate metadata with more than one scan. For example, a user may gesture an "X" followed by a numeral (e.g. 4). In one embodiment, this "4" may be recognized as a gesture. The X gesture may be interpreted to mean that previous scans ought to be deleted, and the "4" may instruct this scanner to delete the previous four gestures.
  • a rubbing gesture may be taken to set a rubbing mode, i.e. all scans are treated as rubbing until an end gesture is entered (possibly a new rubbing gesture, possibly a circle with a diagonal line similar to a forward slash that intersects the circle in two places).
  • a user may be able to use a button, or other input, in combination with a gesture to alter that gesture's result. For example, scanning backwards may mean that this scanned data ought to be erased, but touching a button and then scanning may mean that a user would like to add this text to a scanner's dictionary of known words.
  • a scanner may use template matching or other OCR techniques to determine which characters these are.
  • a processor may then direct memory to store this string of determined characters as a word in a table of recognized character strings.
  • gestures may be able to set modes. For example, in one embodiment, there may be a gesture that performs a function similar to numlock (i.e. when this flag is set, certain inputs are interpreted differently). In one embodiment, a user may gesture a " ⁇ which may be interpreted to mean that all scans and gestures apply to entire paragraphs (e.g. circling 3 words is interpreted as circling the entire paragraph containing those three words) until another "U" is made.
  • ⁇ may be interpreted to mean that all scans and gestures apply to entire paragraphs (e.g. circling 3 words is interpreted as circling the entire paragraph containing those three words) until another "U" is made.
  • Some possible results include pasting or cutting from a source document, in addition to copying from either source or rendered.
  • a user may scan backwards to delete it from one of their copies of a source document.
  • a user may be able to copy from a paper document and paste into an electronic document.
  • a user may use their scanner to interface with a computer monitor in order to interact with an electronic document.
  • a user may gesture a caret (" ⁇ ") scan on a computer monitor to paste text.
  • a scanner may determine that this shape is a caret and then communicate with this computer through a scanner output (e.g. a wireless keyboard protocol, bluetooth, a PS/2 connection) to instruct the computer to insert text.
  • a scanner output e.g. a wireless keyboard protocol, bluetooth, a PS/2 connection
  • This scanner may then provide the text of this user's last forward scan (or an image such that the computer may perform OCR).
  • a word processing program on this computer may then insert this text where the caret gesture designated.
  • a scanner may be used to interact with a computer in a fashion similar to a digital pen. Such a scanner may have a variety of gestures to issue commands matching those of peripherals such as a mouse or joystick.
  • a scanner may function as a joystick by being held vertically pointing down. When a user moves this joystick in a given direction either by tilting or moving, these movements may by interpreted by this scanner as a series of images.
  • an image sensor may record a series of images going the opposite direction, each with more skew. By mapping how parts of these images move or skew, a scanner may be able to determine how it is being moved. These motions may then be communicated to a computer.
  • a scanner may be used by pointing at a screen at a range close enough such that an image sensor may take images of screen that are detailed enough to distinguish a screen location.
  • a cursor may become smaller as a scanner comes closer (and therefore this scanner can more accurately predict where over a screen it is).
  • a scanner may determine its position by querying a computer's display buffer to find a matching image.
  • a scanner may take a series of images as it approaches a screen. This series of images may be used to iteratively zoom in. Each picture may be compared to an earlier image (e.g. the previous image), and the overlapping region determined. As this scanner moves closer, these overlapping regions may become smaller (unless this image sensor is a laser, in which case the image detected may not change size).
  • a scanner may be able to issue mouse or joystick style commands (e.g. click, left click, mouse chords).
  • the scanner has a button, switch or other manual input.
  • the scanner recognizes gestures to issue these commands. For example, an upwards forward slash gesture of less than 2 cm may be interpreted as a click.
  • the scanner embodiment uses a dot gesture as a left click.
  • a dot may be a scan of less than 2 seconds that stays in a 1 cm radius (e.g. moving a scanner to touch a screen and then retracting it).
  • a user may be able to select text in a word processing program and then use a dot gesture on a software button in this program to bold the selected text.
  • a scanner may be used to scroll through a document on a computer monitor.

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  • Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
  • Computational Linguistics (AREA)
  • Computer Vision & Pattern Recognition (AREA)
  • Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
  • General Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
  • Multimedia (AREA)
  • Theoretical Computer Science (AREA)
  • Character Input (AREA)
  • Character Discrimination (AREA)
  • Image Input (AREA)
  • Information Retrieval, Db Structures And Fs Structures Therefor (AREA)

Abstract

L'invention concerne un lecteur optique manuel permettant de saisir des images de texte à partir du rendu d'un document. Ce lecteur comprend un boîtier pouvant être tenu dans la main. Ce boîtier contient un capteur optique qui saisit des images de texte à partir du rendu d'un document. Le boîtier contient également un capteur de proximité qui détecte à quel moment le capteur optique se trouve à une distance prédéterminée, ainsi que l'orientation du document rendu. Le boîtier contient en outre un mécanisme de déclenchement activant la saisie d'une image de texte à partir du rendu d'un document lorsque le capteur de proximité détecte que le capteur optique est placé à une distance et dans une orientation prédéterminées du rendu d'un document.
PCT/US2005/030007 2004-08-23 2005-08-23 Lecteur portatif WO2006023937A2 (fr)

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