Usage Control Device with Period Subtraction Mechanism
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing control devices for electronic apparatuses, such as printing devices, fail to effectively manage and enforce permitted usage limits, leading to excessive usage beyond allocated amounts without adequate mechanisms for handling overages across multiple periods.
Innovation Solution
A control device with a prohibition unit to prevent excessive usage, a subtraction unit to redistribute permitted amounts across subsequent periods, and a permission unit to reinstate access after subtraction, allowing users to select how to allocate reduced usage permissions across future periods.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a prohibition unit prevents users from using the electronic apparatus when cumulative usage exceeds permitted amount, then usage control is improved, but user convenience deteriorates because users cannot continuously use the apparatus even when willing to pay from future periods
Solution Approach 1:
The system dynamically adjusts the prohibition state based on user selection. When users choose to subtract from future periods, the prohibition is lifted and usage is permitted with reduced future allocations. This dynamic response resolves the contradiction by making the system adaptable to user preferences rather than rigidly prohibiting all over-usage cases.
Solution Approach 2:
The subtraction unit acts as an intermediary mechanism between the prohibition unit and the user. It provides a middle ground by allowing continuous usage now while automatically reducing future permitted amounts, thus mediating between strict usage control and user convenience without requiring complex user negotiations.
2Device complexity
If permitted amounts are subtracted from only one future period, then the control mechanism is simple, but usage balance across multiple periods deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments the future time horizon into multiple discrete periods and allows selective subtraction from any combination of these periods. This segmentation enables fine-grained control over usage balance across different time frames, resolving the contradiction by providing both simplicity (through modular period selection) and balance (through distributed subtraction across multiple segments).
Solution Approach 2:
The system dynamically determines the number and identity of future periods from which to subtract, based on user selection. This dynamic flexibility allows the system to optimize usage balance across varying time horizons while maintaining a simple underlying mechanism of periodic subtraction, thus resolving the contradiction between simplicity and balance.
3Adaptability or versatility
If the system allows continuous usage by subtracting from future permitted amounts, then user flexibility is improved, but the enforcement of usage limits deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary subtraction of permitted amounts from future periods before the over-usage occurs. This preliminary action ensures that usage limits are ultimately enforced, as the future periods will have reduced or zero permitted amounts, thus preventing unlimited continuous usage while maintaining user flexibility in the short term.
Solution Approach 2:
The system provides feedback to users about the impact of continuous usage on future permitted amounts. This feedback mechanism ensures that users understand the trade-off between current flexibility and future limitations, thereby maintaining reliable enforcement of overall usage limits while allowing adaptable short-term behavior.
Data Source
AI summary
A control device includes: a prohibition unit that prohibits a user from using an electronic apparatus in a case where a sum of a cumulative usage amount of the electronic apparatus by the user for a predetermined period and a new usage amount which is newly instructed by the user exceeds a permitted amount for the user in the period; a subtraction unit that, in a case where the user instructs the electronic apparatus to be continuously used after the use of the electronic apparatus is prohibited by the prohibition unit, subtracts from permitted amounts for the user for a plurality of periods later than the period; and a permission unit that permits the user to use the electronic apparatus after the subtraction is performed by the subtraction unit.