US9270855B2 - Scanner apparatus having printing unit and scanning unit, related method and computer program product - Google Patents
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- US9270855B2 US9270855B2 US13/430,661 US201213430661A US9270855B2 US 9270855 B2 US9270855 B2 US 9270855B2 US 201213430661 A US201213430661 A US 201213430661A US 9270855 B2 US9270855 B2 US 9270855B2
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- H—ELECTRICITY
- H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
- H04N—PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION
- H04N1/00—Scanning, transmission or reproduction of documents or the like, e.g. facsimile transmission; Details thereof
- H04N1/04—Scanning arrangements, i.e. arrangements for the displacement of active reading or reproducing elements relative to the original or reproducing medium, or vice versa
- H04N1/0461—Scanning arrangements, i.e. arrangements for the displacement of active reading or reproducing elements relative to the original or reproducing medium, or vice versa part of the apparatus being used in common for reading and reproducing
-
- H—ELECTRICITY
- H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
- H04N—PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION
- H04N1/00—Scanning, transmission or reproduction of documents or the like, e.g. facsimile transmission; Details thereof
- H04N1/04—Scanning arrangements, i.e. arrangements for the displacement of active reading or reproducing elements relative to the original or reproducing medium, or vice versa
- H04N1/207—Simultaneous scanning of the original picture and the reproduced picture with a common scanning device
-
- H—ELECTRICITY
- H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
- H04N—PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION
- H04N1/00—Scanning, transmission or reproduction of documents or the like, e.g. facsimile transmission; Details thereof
- H04N1/04—Scanning arrangements, i.e. arrangements for the displacement of active reading or reproducing elements relative to the original or reproducing medium, or vice versa
- H04N1/19—Scanning arrangements, i.e. arrangements for the displacement of active reading or reproducing elements relative to the original or reproducing medium, or vice versa using multi-element arrays
- H04N1/195—Scanning arrangements, i.e. arrangements for the displacement of active reading or reproducing elements relative to the original or reproducing medium, or vice versa using multi-element arrays the array comprising a two-dimensional array or a combination of two-dimensional arrays
-
- H—ELECTRICITY
- H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
- H04N—PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION
- H04N2201/00—Indexing scheme relating to scanning, transmission or reproduction of documents or the like, and to details thereof
- H04N2201/04—Scanning arrangements
- H04N2201/0402—Arrangements not specific to a particular one of the scanning methods covered by groups H04N1/04 - H04N1/207
- H04N2201/0414—Scanning an image in a series of overlapping zones
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- H—ELECTRICITY
- H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
- H04N—PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION
- H04N2201/00—Indexing scheme relating to scanning, transmission or reproduction of documents or the like, and to details thereof
- H04N2201/04—Scanning arrangements
- H04N2201/0402—Arrangements not specific to a particular one of the scanning methods covered by groups H04N1/04 - H04N1/207
- H04N2201/0416—Performing a pre-scan
Definitions
- An embodiment of the disclosure relates to a scanner apparatus. Certain embodiments may relate to a scanner apparatus integrated with a printer.
- CIS scan bar A key part of printers and other conventional image-sensor devices is the Contact Image Sensor (CIS) scan bar, which transforms an image on paper into an electronic image.
- a CIS scan bar may be widely used for facsimile (fax) machines, optical scanners, and portable applications e.g. portable scanners.
- CMOS imaging-sensor arrays Over the years, the cost of CMOS imaging-sensor arrays has decreased, and their performance level increased: these sensors may thus be used in the place of conventional CIS scan bars, giving rise to cheaper solutions without any adverse impact on scanner size.
- DE-A-102006010776 which is incorporated by reference, discloses an arrangement including four fixed CCD-sensors, which are located under a glass for supporting the documents to be scanned and which operate on the basis of a pre-calibrated evaluation algorithm to form an entire image.
- GB-A-2336734 which is incorporated by reference, discloses an image sensor arranged parallel to the short sides of a rectangular lower frame to capture the image of a scanned object placed on a transparent plate mounted on a rectangular upper frame.
- a rod-like guiding member is provided orthogonal to the longitudinal holder to guide the movement of the image sensor.
- an image scanner is equipped with a carriage on which an image sensor is mounted.
- a driving motor moves the carriage in a sub-scanning direction via a toothed timing belt.
- US-A-2006/098252 which is incorporated by reference, discloses a drive device for a scanner which includes an elongate guiding unit mounted in a base and disposed under an image sensor carriage.
- a roller unit is mounted on a bottom side of the image sensor carriage and a driving unit drives the image sensor carriage in a second direction with respect to the base.
- EP-A-0 886 429 which is incorporated by reference, discloses an image input/output apparatus capable of printing and reading images and a cartridge carriage for reading an original with a simple control: the system uses a camera module which replaces the ink cartridge, sharing the same circuitry, which may turn out to be critical for maintaining the same speed for printing and as regards manual replacement of the cartridges.
- Document CN-A-201286132 which is incorporated by reference, discloses a planar-image sensor, high-speed scanner with a reading function, and a copying machine containing an image part, at the bottom of a workbench, which includes n sets of image detection parts and a set of image reading parts; a light-source part above the image part; and a reflection part above the light-source part.
- a main drawback of this solution may lie in that too many cameras may be needed to cover the entire document area.
- An embodiment is achieved by an apparatus, a corresponding method, and a computer program product, loadable in the memory of at least one computer and including software code portions capable of implementing the steps of the method when the product is run on at least one computer.
- Certain embodiments may exploit the ink cartridge carriage of a printer of the “All in One” (AiO) type to move the scanner module, which may include a set of aligned cameras, without the need of another sensor carriage.
- a printer of the “All in One” (AiO) type to move the scanner module, which may include a set of aligned cameras, without the need of another sensor carriage.
- Certain embodiments make it possible to compose the final document by fusing (“stitching”) together various acquired portions of the document.
- FIG. 1 is a schematic representation of an embodiment
- FIG. 2 is representative of image shots taken in certain embodiments
- FIG. 3 is representative of possible positions of sensors in an embodiment
- FIG. 4 schematically represents a live preview of images in an embodiment
- FIG. 5 is representative of an exemplary pattern for use in certain embodiments
- FIG. 6 is a block diagram of an architecture of an embodiment
- FIGS. 7 and 8 are diagrams representative of modes of operation of embodiments
- FIG. 9 is a diagram of an embodiment of a processing pipeline
- FIG. 10 schematically represents various types of geometric distortions
- FIG. 11 shows an example of overlapping images
- FIG. 12 represents an exemplary blending function for use in certain embodiments.
- FIG. 1 is schematically representative of the general structure of an embodiment of a scanner apparatus 10 .
- scanner apparatus will apply to any type of apparatus adapted to provide a scanning function of, e.g., printed matter such as text and figures, possibly in conjunction with other functions such as, e.g., printing, copying, transmitting/receiving, or processing. Save for what is disclosed in detail in this disclosure, such scanning apparatus is conventional in the art, thus making it unnecessary to provide a more detailed description herein.
- the exemplary apparatus 10 includes a containment body or casing 12 having a transparent (e.g. glass) surface 14 or “platen” for lying thereon a document D to be scanned.
- a transparent (e.g. glass) surface 14 or “platen” for lying thereon a document D to be scanned.
- Scanning is performed by a sensor unit 16 (of any known type) to which is imparted a scanning movement (see the double arrow S in FIG. 1 ) by a motorized carriage 18 .
- Reference 20 denotes a flexible cable or “flex” which carries signals between the moving sensor/carriage unit 16 and the stationary portion of apparatus 10 .
- the scanning movement S enables the scanning window WA of the sensor 16 to subsequently cover (i.e. “frame”) various portions of the object D being scanned (see e.g. 1 , 3 ; 5 , 7 o 2 , 4 ; 6 , 8 in FIG. 2 ) and produce respective partial images of the object D.
- frame various portions of the object D being scanned (see e.g. 1 , 3 ; 5 , 7 o 2 , 4 ; 6 , 8 in FIG. 2 ) and produce respective partial images of the object D.
- the sensor unit 16 such as e.g. one or more VGA (Video Graphics Array) module or modules, may be mounted directly on the ink cartridge carriage as provided in apparatus 10 configured for acting also as a printer (e.g. in photocopiers, facsimile apparatus, and the like).
- VGA Video Graphics Array
- the carriage 18 carrying the sensor unit 16 is the same carriage carrying a printer unit ( 22 ) including one or more ink reservoirs.
- the exemplary integrated scanner apparatus considered herein may thus include a support surface 14 for objects to be scanned (e.g. a document D) as well as a scanner unit 16 to perform a scanning movement S relative to the support surface 14 to capture images of portions of objects D to be scanned.
- a printer unit 22 is carried by a carriage 18 mobile with respect to the support surface 14 ; the scanner unit 16 is thus carried by the same carriage 18 carrying the printer unit 22 and is thus imparted the scanning movement S by the carriage 18 .
- the printer unit 22 carried by the carriage 18 includes at least one ink reservoir.
- a number of “shots” i.e., partial images
- these shots may then be fused or “stitched” together (for example, via software) to produce a final complete image CI.
- the resolution may be determined by the number of shots taken and the distance from the sensor unit 16 to the document D.
- FIG. 2 is schematically representative of embodiments where the sensor unit 16 may be operated in such a way that plural (e.g. two) sets of different shots (namely 1 , 3 , 5 , 7 and 2 , 4 , 6 , 8 , respectively) will be taken and fused (i.e. combined or “stitched”) to obtain a final image CI.
- plural (e.g. two) sets of different shots namely 1 , 3 , 5 , 7 and 2 , 4 , 6 , 8 , respectively
- the sensor unit 16 may include two modules 16 A, 16 B, so that (two) sets of different shots (namely 1 , 3 , 5 , 7 for the first module and 2 , 4 , 6 , 8 for the second module) will be taken during a single stroke of the carriage 18 and fused (i.e. combined or “stitched”) to obtain a final image CI.
- Certain embodiments may use a single module producing all of the partial images as follows: images 1 , 3 , 5 , 7 are captured while the carriage is moving in one direction, followed by a translation of the module in the orthogonal direction (which can be achieved purely by mechanical means), followed by a carriage movement in the opposite direction during which partial images 8 , 6 , 4 , 2 are captured, in that order.
- This approach trades cost (a single module) for time (partial images are captured serially instead of two at a time, roughly doubling the total capture time)
- the exemplary integrated scanner apparatus considered herein may thus include at least one scanner module, each module having a capture window WA ( FIG. 1 ) adapted to cover a portion of the objects D to be scanned; during the scanning movement S imparted by the carriage 18 , each scanner module 16 A, 16 B produces a plurality of partial images (namely 1 , 3 , 5 , 7 and 2 , 4 , 6 , 8 , respectively) of the objects D to be scanned.
- a processing module 26 may be provided to fuse the plurality of partial images into a complete image (CI).
- the exemplary integrated scanner apparatus considered herein may include a plurality of scanner modules (e.g. two scanner modules 16 A, 16 B); during the scanning movement S imparted by the carriage 18 , each sensor module 16 A, 16 B will produce a respective set of partial images (that is images 1 , 3 , 5 , 7 for the module 16 A and images 2 , 4 , 6 , 8 for the module 16 B) of the objects D being scanned.
- a processing module 26 may be provided to fuse the respective sets of partial images ( 1 , 3 , 5 , 7 with 2 , 4 , 6 , 8 , respectively) into a complete image (CI).
- the modules or cameras 16 A, 16 B may be arranged orthogonal to the plane of the “platen” 14 (and thus of the document D laid thereon), which will remove any “keystone” effect, so that keystone correction will not be necessary.
- absolute orientation and straightening may be applied, as better detailed in the following.
- two modules or cameras 16 A, 16 B with a HFoV (Horizontal Field of View) of 60 degrees, located, e.g., 96 mm from the platen/document plane, may be able to capture a smallest dimension of an A4 or a US letter document (8.5 ⁇ 11 inches).
- HFoV Herizontal Field of View
- a quick live preview may be performed as schematically exemplified in FIG. 4 .
- FIG. 4 assumes that the carriage 18 is in a “parked” mode.
- a sensor 16 may then be inclined (i.e. tilted) from the vertical position used during capture (in shadow lines in FIG. 4 ) to an oblique position (in full lines in FIG. 4 ) in order to capture in its field of view the entire document.
- the sensor 16 will capture the document D lying on the platen 14 ; the perspective generated by the inclination of the sensor can be corrected on the fly to restore the document: this is essentially a keystone effect, easy to be corrected with conventional correction techniques. Quality may be low but sufficient for preview.
- Behind (i.e. above) the platen 14 a test chart, arranged along the document sides, may be placed to be visible by the sensor(s) only.
- FIG. 5 An exemplary test pattern is shown in FIG. 5 , again by referring to two sets of partial images 1 , 3 , 5 , 7 (sensor module 16 A) and 2 , 4 , 6 , 8 (sensor module 16 B).
- the exemplary integrated scanner apparatus considered herein may thus provide for the scanner unit 16 being selectively tiltable to a preview scanning position wherein the scanner unit 16 images a document to be scanned from a stationary position.
- certain embodiments may adopt the architecture exemplified in the block diagram of FIG. 6 , including:
- Certain embodiments may admit at least two main operational modes, namely an open loop mode and a closed loop mode.
- the scanner modules (which are represented in FIGS. 7 and 8 as a scanner “engine” 30 ) may not use the feedback on the real head position available (only) to the printing module (which is represented in FIGS. 7 and 8 as a print “engine” 32 such as a ASIC) as provided by a (e.g. linear) encoder 34 .
- the processing pipeline 26 ( FIG. 6 ) may contain a stitching phase where the sensor displacement parameters (i.e. the position at which a certain shot was taken) are calculated at run time.
- the scanner module 30 and the printing module 32 may be considered completely independent of each other, i.e. the scanner unit 16 will be operated independently of any feedback on the current position of the printing module 32 as provided by the motion sensor/encoder 34 associated with the carriage 18 .
- the scanner module 30 may take into account the feedback on the current position of the printing module 32 as provided to the print engine 32 by the encoder 34 during the printing phase.
- the scanner module 30 may exploit the information provided by the encoder 34 through the printer ASIC 32 .
- the real position may be used by the stitching module in the processing pipeline ( 26 in FIG. 6 ) to obtain precise information of the acquisition position.
- the carriage 18 may thus have associated therewith a motion sensor 34 providing a feedback signal representative of the position of the carriage 18 ; the scanner unit 16 is then operable as a function of the feedback signal.
- the processing pipeline 26 may have the structure represented in FIG. 9 .
- block 100 is representative of a first step in the exemplary pipeline considered, wherein geometric correction is performed to apply the estimated intrinsic sensor/system parameters (obtained with external tools) to correct geometric distortions in the images CI (as derived, e.g., from the ISP 23 ).
- geometric correction may be performed “upstream” of the memory 24 , that is before the images are stored in the memory 24 . In certain embodiments, geometric corrections may be performed “downstream” of the memory 24 .
- the pipeline 26 may operate the first time with a re-sized version of the images produced in a sub-step 102 to obtain a preview, while the second time it works with the full resolution version of the images.
- Stitching i.e. fusing together
- the images as derived from the memory 24
- Stitching is performed in a block/step 110 using the parameters estimated while also possibly applying seamless blending to avoid seams between images.
- the pipeline may be supplemented with further, additional steps.
- one or more of the steps considered herein may be absent or performed differently: e.g., (by way of non-limiting example) the step 114 may be performed off-line whenever this appears preferable (errors in reconstruction).
- geometric distortions may be of two kinds: barrel and pincushion distortions. Both types of distortions can be reduced by using proper off-line tools to estimate the intrinsic parameters to be applied to the images taken by the sensor.
- two kinds of tools may be used, namely multiplane-camera calibration and lens-distortion-model estimation, respectively.
- CAMCAL may be another tool (see http://people.scs.carleton.ca/ ⁇ c_shu/Research/Projects/CAMcal/, which is incorporated by reference and which uses a different approach as disclosed, e.g. in A. Brunton, et al.: “Automatic Grid Finding in Calibration Patterns Using Delaunay Triangulation”, Technical Report NRC-46497/ERB-1104, 2003, which is incorporated by reference, and an ad-hoc test pattern.
- CMLA complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor
- CMLA complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor
- a checkerboard pattern may be used, taken exactly in front of the camera, without rotation to simplify the work of tracing horizontal and vertical lines.
- the captioned tool will know where these points are actually located (by deriving this information from the grid of the pattern image) and where these points should be (thanks to user manual lines specification), and simply solve a system to determine the distortion parameters.
- a color-correction procedure may be optionally applied (possibly after the camera—i.e. sensor module—calibration) to correct shading discontinuities.
- a Linear Histogram Transform LHT may be adopted, forcing selected areas to have the same mean value and variance.
- equations may be used to gather statistics on a selected area:
- keystone correction may be another optional step, possibly applied after color correction.
- a rotation step may be performed to align the image on axis.
- the Hough transform may be applied on a chessboard-patch gradient image (as obtained, e.g., by a simple horizontal Sobel filtering).
- the related procedure may include, in addition to feature extraction and matching properly, also an outlier removal step ((block 106 in FIG. 9 ).
- the first step/phase may extract the characteristic features for each image and match these features for each couple of images to obtain the correspondence points, while the second step may filter the obtained points to be in line with the chosen model (rigid, affine, homographic and so on).
- the features may be extracted using the SIFT or SURF transforms as disclosed, e.g., in D. Lowe: “Distinctive Image Features from Scale-Invariant Keypoints”, International Journal of Computer Vision 60 (2): 91-110, 2004 and H. Bay, et al.: “SURF: Speeded Up Robust Features”, Computer Vision and Image Understanding (CVIU), Vol. 110, No. 3, pp. 346-359, 2008), which are incorporated by reference, and the matches may be made accordingly.
- a high number of outliers may be easily noticed in the case of final matches obtained via SIFT.
- the final matches obtained in the previous step may be filtered through RANSAC (Random Sample On Consensus Set).
- this technique may involve the following steps:
- Certain embodiments may include global registration (block 108 of FIG. 9 ).
- all overlapping pairs should be considered.
- four images (A, B, C, D) may be considered, so all the possible pairs resulting from combinations are: (A,B), (A,C), (A,D), (B-C), (B-D), (C-D).
- the registration may take into account simultaneous warping effects.
- One image for example A, may be used as a “world” reference (i.e. all images may be registered with respect to A).
- H ij denotes the motion matrix to register image j on image i.
- the corresponding motion models may be rigid (6), affine (7), and homographic (8), respectively:
- image stitching (step 110 of FIG. 9 ) may involve the use of seamless blending in order to avoid image discontinuities; output images may be blended using a proper weighting function, in which weights decrease from the image center towards the edges.
- FIG. 12 An example of this kind of function is shown in FIG. 12 .
- global straightening (block 112 of FIG. 9 ) may be included to ensure, via a step similar to keystone removal, image ‘squareness’.
- a pattern test image is used, which may be produced by composing blank documents and/or documents with points with lack of interest to be inserted under hidden parts of the system.
- test pattern image thus created may contain black squares. These squares may be matched with known pattern using SAD (Sum of Absolute Difference) computation. Once the corners (at least four) are found, the correct rectangle can be estimated and the correction (using homographic model) performed. Homographic parameters may be estimated by means of linear system between matched and ideal corners.
- both the input image and the test image may be subjected to sub-sampling (for example by two) in order to speed-up processing.
- Certain embodiments may give rise to a low-cost scanning system using one or more sensors in movement to scan the image, without the need of another sensor carriage.
- a processing pipeline may be used which can be effectively implemented in software form.
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Abstract
Description
-
- one or more, e.g. two,
sensor modules carriage 18; - a processing device (e.g. a ISP) 23 to obtain image signals from the signals produces by the
sensor modules - a
memory 24 to store the images collected via thedevice 23; - a scanner-
engine driver 18A to control the position/movement S of thecarriage 18; - a processing (“fusing” or “stitching”)
pipeline 26 to generate a final image OI, possibly in the preview mode considered in the foregoing.
- one or more, e.g. two,
-
- 104—keypoint detection and matching, to match feature points (calculated by conventional keypoint descriptor methodologies, such as SIFT/SURF);
- 106—outlier removal using, e.g., conventional techniques such as RANSAC (Random Sample Consensus) technique;
- 108—global registration, performed on correspondences while also estimating the registration parameters.
-
- 112—global straightening, which may be a final post-processing step (similar to keystone) to ensure image ‘squareness’;
- 114—post processing such as, e.g., a further-color-enhancements algorithm to be globally applied to the image, such as white-point detection and application, color contrast, etc., to finally produce as a result a final image (which may be represented also by a preview image captured as explained previously).
-
- select in a random fashion a minimal number of samples to estimate registration;
- estimate registration;
- discard samples which are not in agreement with estimated motion;
- repeat the process until the probability of outliers falls under a threshold; and
- use a maximum number of inliers to estimate final registration.
H AA =I
H AA x 1 =H AB x 2
H AA x 3 =H AC x 4
H AA x 5 =H AD x 6
H AB x 7 =H AC x 8
H AB x 9 =H AD x 10
H AC x 11 =H AD x 12 (5)
-
- fewer sensor modules/cameras (according to their Horizontal Field of View or HFoV) may be used to cover the horizontal dimension (in portrait mode) of the object being scanned;
- the sensor modules/cameras may share a common carriage with the ink cartridge(s) and exploit the same head motor;
- the head motor may be moved to fixed positions to capture portions of the document and the image portions thus captures may be fused (“stitched”) to create a final document;
- the overall cost of the scanner unit may be reduced essentially to the cost of the sensor modules/cameras (plus associated elements, e.g., flashlight(s)), without any motor cost;
- acquisition time may be reduced to a limited number of image shots;
- system identification may be very simple: the sensor modules/cameras may be mounted on the ink-carriage and acquisition may be based on several shots (WA′, WA″, WA′″ ecc . . . ) at fixed positions.
Claims (21)
Applications Claiming Priority (3)
Application Number | Priority Date | Filing Date | Title |
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IT000261A ITTO20110261A1 (en) | 2011-03-25 | 2011-03-25 | "APPARATUS SCANNER, PROCEDURE AND IT RELATED PRODUCT" |
ITTO2011A0261 | 2011-03-25 | ||
ITTO2011A000261 | 2011-03-25 |
Publications (2)
Publication Number | Publication Date |
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US20120281244A1 US20120281244A1 (en) | 2012-11-08 |
US9270855B2 true US9270855B2 (en) | 2016-02-23 |
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US13/430,661 Expired - Fee Related US9270855B2 (en) | 2011-03-25 | 2012-03-26 | Scanner apparatus having printing unit and scanning unit, related method and computer program product |
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US8559063B1 (en) | 2012-11-30 | 2013-10-15 | Atiz Innovation Co., Ltd. | Document scanning and visualization system using a mobile device |
US8988733B2 (en) | 2013-04-16 | 2015-03-24 | Hewlett-Packard Indigo B.V. | To generate an image |
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