Heather Clancy
2005 imagine turning a small camera in your phone into a portable file scanner: you can shoot contracts with care, when researching a task or selling a phone, notes recorded on a whiteboard or other handwritten message, later convert them into a hard copy or a processing format on the computer.
This is exactly what scientists at the glennoble Xerox European research center in France envisioned when developing mobile document imaging software, which will be available later this year.
The technology works with camera phones with a resolution of at least 1 pixel to create digital images of documents or presentations.
It checks and corrects the blur and shadow and then compresses the image into a file that can be transferred to a fax machine, another phone or computer via a multimedia information serviceMMS -
Or Bluetooth wireless technology.
Images can be printed later.
Christopher Dance, senior scientist and image processing manager at Xerox's European Research Center, said: "When we hand it over to test users, it's easy for them to appreciate it . ".
"Even the simplest application, just share the document and store the document you captured.
You can even use your hands.
Write a message and send it to someone else's phone.
"Xerox is negotiating with potential licensees through its licensing agency, IPValue Management, and patented technology can be handed over to users in the middle of the year.
Potential licensees include telephone manufacturers, wireless operators, and document developers
Manage software.
The working principle of Xerox software is:step process.
Create an image of a letter-
A piece of paper of the right size, you have to put the camera about 1 feet away from the document and take a picture.
Dance says it's hard to capture smaller files
For example, a business card --
Because the lens of most mobile phones is not focused much closer.
Once the image is captured, you can fix the blur and convert it to black and white.
Next, you may need to adjust the contrast to eliminate shadows or reflections from certain types of paper or document surfaces.
Finally, compress the image using a format called Fax Group 4 or g4.
For example, an image starting at a size of 200 bytes can be compressed to 20 bytes.
With this compression, Dance says, a phone can store about 10 pages of images in the space it takes to store a digital photo.
Xerox researchers believe the technology is useful for anyone who needs to do research in the field.
For example, people attending trade shows or conferences can capture and store relevant documents in their mobile phones.
Dance believes that most people are unlikely to want to see these images on small screens, but instead transfer them to a computer, which can be converted into editable text using optical character recognition software, this is usually included in the desktop scanner.
Others may want to send the document image to a business assistant or family member as MMS.
Paul Withington, manager of research firm International Data
He has seen the use of the technology, and he envisions personal and commercial applications, especially in industries that still rely on paper.
For example, an architect visiting a construction site can take notes on a blueprint, take photos, and send images to colleagues as an email
Email attachment, or go directly to the fax machine.
The insurance agent can record the contract on site and then download it to the computer for archiving.
"It seems to me that any mobile professional who spends a lot of time on the road will have an app," said Withington . ".
Xerox researchers are also working on complementary technologies to catalog these and other digital images.
While this is part of a different research project that has not yet been implemented, the technology will use the histogram to group the images, and the histogram draws pixels related to specific parts of the digital photo.
In some cases, the text description will be associated with these histogram.
This may also be useful in field research: students or other researchers can take photos of objects or animals and check the compressed images against search engines for more information about their identity
Alex Slawsby, senior analyst at IDC mobile devices, estimates that about 89 million phones with cameras will be sold in the United States this year.
About 40% of them will have a resolution of 1 megapixel or higher, he said.
"Xerox technology is actually very important to come up with solutions that really take advantage of camera phones," Slawsby said . ".
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