Cellular Phone Linear Scanner for Document Imaging
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current cellular phone cameras have low resolution and lack the capability to clearly image text documents, making them unsuitable for scanning purposes, while existing scanners are not portable or integrated with communication devices.
Innovation Solution
Incorporating a linear optical scanning capability into a cellular phone, enabling handheld scanning, storage, and transmission of documents, along with optical character recognition (OCR), language translation, and text-to-speech conversion.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If a cellular phone camera is used for document scanning, then the device remains portable and integrated, but the resolution is too low to clearly image text documents
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines a linear optical scanner with a cellular phone, merging two previously separate functions (scanning and mobile communication) into a single integrated device. This allows the phone to perform high-resolution document scanning while maintaining portability and communication capabilities.
Solution Approach 2:
The cellular phone is enhanced with multiple functions including document scanning, optical character recognition (OCR), language translation, and text-to-speech conversion. This multi-functional approach allows a single device to serve various purposes from communication to document processing.
2Measurement precision
If a linear scanner is used for high-resolution scanning, then document imaging quality improves, but the device becomes non-portable or requires manual movement across the document
Solution Approach 1:
The patent integrates a linear optical scanner into a cellular phone, combining the high-resolution scanning capability with the portability of a mobile device. The scanner is positioned on the phone and can be manually moved across the document, providing both high resolution and ease of use.
Solution Approach 2:
The scanner is designed to move in one dimension (across the document width) while the phone itself can be moved to cover the full document area. This multi-dimensional approach to scanning provides both high resolution and portability.
3Measurement precision
If a camera with higher resolution is used, then document imaging capability improves, but the device still lacks the resolution needed for clear text imaging
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces the camera-based imaging system with a linear optical scanner. Instead of using a two-dimensional camera array, a one-dimensional linear scanner is used, which moves across the document to capture high-resolution text images with simpler optics.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
Enables high-resolution document scanning, storage, and transmission on a cellular phone, enhancing usability with OCR, language translation, and text-to-speech capabilities, addressing the limitations of existing camera and scanner technologies.
Implementation Method 1
scanner optics including a linear optical scanning array, positioned on a side edge of the main housing and oriented to image a document
Data Source
AI summary
A cellular phone is provided with a media scanning capability. Scanner optics, an optional light source and related scanning circuitry is integrated within a cellular phone to enable image or text scanning, facsimile, text-to-speech conversion, and language translation. Position sensors provide position data as the scanner is manually moved, in one or more passes across the scanned media, to enable a bit-mapped image of the strip to be created in a data buffer. Image data from the strips is processed to remove redundant overlap data and skew position errors, to give a bit-mapped final image of the entire scanned item. Image compression is provided to compress the image into standard JPEG format for storage or transmission, or into facsimile format for transmission of the document to any fax machine. Optical character recognition (OCR) is provided to convert image data to text which may be sent as email, locally displayed, stored for later use, or further processed. Further processing of text data includes language translation and text to speech conversion of either the original or translated text. The resulting speech audio can be heard locally or transmitted over the cellular network.