Optical Character Recognition Text Extraction for Mobile Input
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional methods for interacting with computing devices, such as entering phone numbers or web addresses, are tedious and time-consuming, and there is a need for more efficient ways to provide textual information to applications or services on portable devices.
Innovation Solution
A portable computing device is equipped with a camera that captures images of text, processes them using optical character recognition (OCR) algorithms, and identifies patterns like phone numbers, email addresses, or URLs, enabling the device to perform associated actions automatically or with user confirmation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If manual input methods are used for entering phone numbers, email addresses, or web addresses, then users have direct control over input accuracy, but the process becomes tedious and time-consuming
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces the mechanical manual typing process with an optical recognition system. The camera captures images of text, and OCR algorithms automatically convert the visual text into digital input, eliminating the need for manual keyboard entry and dramatically reducing input time
Solution Approach 2:
The system enables self-service text input by automatically capturing, recognizing, and processing text from images. The device performs the entire text extraction workflow autonomously without requiring user intervention for typing, allowing users to simply point and capture
2Ease of operation
If optical character recognition is used to automatically recognize text from images, then manual input time is reduced, but the device processing complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the text processing task into distinct modular components: image capture module, OCR processing module, pattern recognition module, and application execution module. This segmentation allows each component to be optimized independently and simplifies the overall system architecture
Solution Approach 2:
The system employs a universal OCR engine that can recognize multiple text formats (phone numbers, email addresses, URLs, physical addresses) and integrate with various applications (messaging, browsing, mapping). This multi-functional approach consolidates what would otherwise require separate specialized systems
Data Source
AI summary
Various approaches for providing textual information to an application, system, or service are disclosed. In particular, various embodiments enable a user to capture an image with a camera of a portable computing device. The computing device is capable of taking the image and processing it to recognize, identify, and/or isolate the text in order to forward the text to an application or function. The application or function can then utilize the text to perform an action in substantially real-time. The text may include an email, phone number, URL, an address, and the like and the application or function may be dialing the phone number, navigating to the URL, opening an address book to save contact information, displaying a map to show the address, and so on.