Image analysis – Image sensing – Hand-held
Reexamination Certificate
1998-02-19
2001-05-01
Tadaton, Bijan (Department: 2724)
Image analysis
Image sensing
Hand-held
C382S312000, C375S213000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06226422
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to document scanners and more particularly to portable document scanners. Even more particularly, the invention relates to voice annotating the resulting image data file obtained from scanning a document with a portable document scanner.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Portable hand held document scanners have proven to be very useful tools in certain situations. Their portability and ease in gathering information from various locations away from a users office or work place are two of the primary benefits of such devices.
A user may be on a business trip visiting various company sites. At each site the user may need to scan documents pertaining to one or several different projects which will be worked on back at the user's office or work place. Once back at the user's office or work place, the scanned documents can be uploaded to a host computer and then viewed or accessed through the appropriate application software.
With current portable hand held document scanners, retrieving a particular document from device memory to download to a host computer may require displaying numerous scanned documents in sequence until the desired document is found. This can be a very time consuming and inefficient process, especially if there are numerous documents held in device memory.
Also, if numerous drawings or schematics are scanned into the device that are similar in appearance, or the user is not familiar with the documents, or the documents are not inherently labeled to tell them apart, the user may experience difficulty in determining which document is which and the project with which each document is associated when back at the user's office or work place. In addition, someone other than the user who scanned the documents may download and use the documents. This person is in an even less knowledgeable position to sort out and identify each of the scanned documents.
There is thus a need in the art to annotate scanned documents with a description of the document, or background information about the document, at the time the document is being captured on a portable hand held document scanner. There is a need in the art to accomplish this annotation in a fast, efficient, and device resource conserving fashion. There is also a need in the art to be able to quickly review scanned documents held in device memory in order to identify the particular document or documents that are desired for purposes of uploading to a host computer or displaying on the portable hand held document scanner display.
It is thus apparent that there is a need in the art for an improved method or apparatus which solves these problems. The present invention meets these and other needs in the art.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is an aspect of the present invention to voice annotate an image data file of a document scanned by a document scanner.
It is another aspect of the invention to save the voice annotation as a separate file from the image data file.
Yet another aspect of the invention is to establish a connection between the image data file and the voice annotation file.
Still another aspect of the invention is to compress the data contained in the voice annotation file before storing in device memory.
A further aspect of the invention is to play back a series of voice annotation files and to select one or more connected image data files for further action, such as uploading the selected image data files to a host computer.
A still further aspect of the invention is to automatically transfer the voice annotation file connected with an image data file to a host computer when that image data file is uploaded to the host computer.
Another aspect of the invention is to automatically notify a user that an image data file has a connected voice annotation file whenever the user selects the image data file.
Another further aspect of the invention is to play back the voice annotation file when selected by the user from a user interface program in the host computer by decompressing the data contained in the voice annotation file and reformatting the data to an audio file format recognized by the sound card driver software in the host computer.
The above and other aspects of the invention are accomplished in a document scanning device that scans a document and stores it as an image data file in device memory, and then annotates the image data file by capturing speech data using a voice pickup located in the device. The device digitizes the speech input, compresses the speech, and then stores the speech data in device memory as a voice annotation file. The device provides a “connection” between the voice annotation file, also referred to as a voice clip, and the image data file. When the user uploads the image data file to a host computer, the voice clip is also automatically transferred.
When the user, or another person, selects the file through a user interface (UI) program, the UI program recognizes that a voice clip is connected with the image data file. The UI program may automatically play the voice clip, or notify the user that there is a voice clip and wait for an indication from the user to play the voice clip. After the user indicates a desire to play the voice clip, the play back process begins. The play back process involves decompressing the speech and then reformatting the speech into a format which the host computer sound card driver software can recognize. The sound card then outputs a signal to an audio speaker.
In an alternate implementation of the invention, the voice clip is stored in an industry standard audio file format, for example a WAV file, at the time of capture.
REFERENCES:
patent: 4951147 (1990-08-01), Aknar et al.
patent: 5430558 (1995-07-01), Sohaei et al.
patent: 5471009 (1995-11-01), Oba et al.
patent: 5535011 (1996-07-01), Yamagami et al.
patent: 5680500 (1997-10-01), Takahashi et al.
patent: 5708826 (1998-01-01), Ikeda et al.
patent: 5794251 (1998-08-01), Watanabe et al.
patent: 5838718 (1998-11-01), Ichihashi
patent: 5905250 (1999-05-01), Fukuda et al.
Do Anh Hong
Hewlett--Packard Company
Tadaton Bijan
LandOfFree
Voice annotation of scanned images for portable scanning... does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with Voice annotation of scanned images for portable scanning..., we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Voice annotation of scanned images for portable scanning... will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-2521784