WO2003055688A1

WO2003055688A1 - Portable printer application

Info

Publication number: WO2003055688A1
Application number: PCT/SE2002/002001
Authority: WO
Inventors: Alex Walling
Original assignee: Print Dreams Europe Ab
Priority date: 2001-12-21
Filing date: 2002-11-04
Publication date: 2003-07-10
Also published as: AU2002347714A1

Abstract

A portable wireless printer is shown, the printer operating on almost any print medium independent of its size or thickness. The printer is manually swept over the print medium to complete the image. Optical sensors navigate the printer by reading the structure of the print medium. A micro controller circuit is sending commands to a print head for timingly ejecting ink from nozzles. The printer is equipped with voice recognition means comprised inside the printer or alternatively inside a server connected to the printer. A user wanting to take notes talks to the printer that converts received voice data to a printable text file ready for subsequent printing.

Description

Portable Printer Application

TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to a portable printer, which is manually swept in random movements over a print medium to form an image downloaded into said printer. The downloading of information/images can be performed in numerous ways, some of which will be described herein.

DESCRIPTION OF RELATED ART

Hand-held and hand-operated printing devices with an inkjet print head are known through various documents .

US patent No. 5,927,872 by Yamada (Hewlett Packard) discloses a system and a method of printing an image represented by a frame of image data utilizing a hand-held printer having optical sensor means for tracking positions of the hand-held printer relative to a surface of a print medium during a printing process. It is monitored in real time using navigation information generated by the optical sensor.

Each optical sensor comprises an array of opto-electronic elements to capture images of the surface of a print medium at fixed time intervals. Preferably, the optical sensor means can detect slight pattern variations on the print medium, such as paper fibres or illumination pattern formed by highly reflective surface features and shadowed areas between raised surface features. These features can then be used as references for determining the position and the relative movement of the handheld printer. During the printing process, the hand-held printer can also use the printed portions of the image as reference positions. In one embodiment, the hand-held printer contains a navigation processor and a printer driver. Using the printer driver, the navigation processor drives the hand-held printer to print segments of the image onto a print medium as the hand-held printer travels across the print medium to form a composite of the image .

In the international application WO 01/74598 Al, a hand-held printer in shape of a pen is shown. The printer writes on a special paper having an absolute and unique pre-printed pattern. An image sensor inside the printer records an image of the paper. The printer is adapted to convert the recorded image into at least one recorded position in the form of two coordinates. In that way, the printer always knows its exact position and is able to print an image stored in a memory inside the printer. This printer consequently needs a paper with a certain pattern to be able to operate and a processor adapted for pattern recognition.

One reason for having a pre-printed paper is that it improves and facilitates navigation and positioning of the print head and thereby also enhances the printing quality. The positioning without special paper is hence a difficult technique to master when developing hand-held printers that are swept over the print medium with hand movements, to form an image.

Hand-held printing devices according to prior art are restricted to print images which either are downloaded by wire or wirelessly or either pre-stored in a memory inside the printer device . Downloading an image and to have it printed out could take a lot of time and pre-storing the memory with images or text have its limitations mainly because of the capacity of the memory, but also gives an inherent form of inflexibility. To be able to print a text which is formulated in a users head "on the fly" e.g. when taking notes, the user needs to type it on his PC, laptop or PDA first and then establish a preferably wireless connection to his hand-held printer before he could have his print out. This takes time and in certain situations it could be desirable to have a professional print out instead of a handwritten note in a very short notice, completed by a portable printing device.

US Patent No. 5,661,783 describes an electronic secretary consisting of a telephone recorder connected to a fixed telephone line and a computer connected to the telephone recorder. The computer contains voice recognition software and allows the user the ability to digitising the caller voice message by using said software and to print the message on paper contained within a stationary printer, i.e. printing on a fixed- size printing medium.

By analyzing the state of the art through the above documents a need emerges of providing a very small printer with a wide use spectrum that could print out text in a faster manner than what is provided for according to prior art, i.e. faster than what is possible when having to download what you want to print into the printer device from a PC, a mail server, or some Internet server and even faster than what is possible when you first have to type in the text and then send it to the printer. A printer should preferably be lightweight and having the ability to print what you want "on the fly" .

The printout should preferably be possible to accomplish also on any print medium and should not be restricted to any paper with a pre-printed pattern. SUMMARY

It is an object of the present invention to overcome the abovementioned problems by providing a printer having means for creating a print file ready for printout very shortly after a user has formulated a text in his mind.

In an embodiment of the invention it is therefore provided a printer, preferably but not necessary portable, with means for transforming speech into text for a subsequent printout in a very rapid manner by using a voice recognition circuit/software. The printer is able to write on almost any reflective and flat surface and is not restricted to the size or thickness of the printout surface .

A lightweight, portable and manually operated printer is provided that uses the print medium to navigate on by using optical sensors. The sensors give positioning data to a micro controller circuit, which in turn matches said data with an image to be printed. Commands are sent in real time as the printer is swept over the print medium to a print head comprising of a multitude of nozzles for ejecting ink. The printer is preferably equipped with a voice recognition circuit having the ability to translate voice data into a data file such as e.g. a text file. Standard software is then applied to convert the data file into a bitmap file to obtain an "image" suitable for subsequent printing.

In accordance with another embodiment of the invention it is therefore provided a printer, preferably but not necessary portable, having means to connect to a server comprising means for transforming speech into text . The printer connects to the server via e.g. a mobile phone. The server converts voice data to a suitable print out format and sends it back to the users printer for subsequent printout .

It is also provided a method for converting voice data to printed text by using a portable printer equipped with, or in connection with a server equipped with, voice recognition means.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The features of the invention believed to be novel are set forth with particularity in the appended claims. The invention itself however, both as to organisation and method of operation, together with further objects and advantages thereof, may be best understood by reference to the following description with the accompanying drawings, in the Figures in which:

- Fig. 1 illustrates a perspective view in section of a printing device according to the present invention and

Fig. 2 illustrates a perspective view from underneath of a printing device according to the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF EMBODIMENTS

Referring now in detail to the drawings and initially to Fig. 1, there is shown a kind of portable hand-operated printer as described in the Swedish patent application SE 0102542-8, by the same applicant, which hereby is incorporated by reference and will therefore only be briefly described. The printer device comprises a construction/design body 1 and a print-head 2 which interacts with one or more optical positioning transceiver means 3, a micro controller circuit 4, a communication unit 5 to receive and transmit printing data, one or more command buttons 6, preferably a control screen 7, and a source of energy, in this case a battery 8. The embodiment according to Fig. 1 and 2 illustrates the different components of a printing device fixed to a printed circuit board 9 that simultaneously functions as a construction surface where those components are fixed. The placing of the several components within the construction body is arbitrary and the figure merely gives an example of a possible design.

The printing process could start with a data file containing printing patterns is sent via the communication unit 5 to a data memory, for example, one which is built into the micro controller circuit 4. A built in positioning start marking 13 could be used as an outgoing point of reference in the print surface, however not necessary. One or more sources of light, e.g. light emitting diodes (LED) 11, light up the printing surface so the optical positioning transceiver means are activated and then the forward feeding of the coordinates to the micro controller circuit can take place by using the inherent microstructure of the navigation/printing surface or print medium 10. Position data is compared with data from the data file containing the printing pattern to see whether an ink jet droplet should be ejected from a print head nozzle 12 or not at every moment. The printer device is manually swept over the printing surface until the print out is completed.

An image can be pre-stored in the data memory or alternatively be downloaded wirelessly to the printer from e.g. a mobile phone, a laptop, a PDA or the like. A wired connection is also conceivable. As a wireless connection, IR or Bluetooth could be used as well as other similar techniques.

In a preferred embodiment of the invention, the printer device also comprises voice recognition means. Such means could be of different complexity. For example, a simple circuit with a small memory, having the ability to recognize just a few words that you have to program yourself in advance. It is also feasible, and preferred to have a more advanced type, which could convert complete sentences and phrases into text data. Voice recognition means of this type does not demand that each user have to pre-record the words that should be identified. Such advanced voice recognition products are programmed by the producer to be able to recognize words and/or complete phrases from any user.

The voice recognition means could be placed anywhere in the design body and is therefore not illustrated in the figure. It should however be connected to the micro controller circuit 4 so that the micro controller could process any information received by the voice recognition means . The voice recognition means comprises a circuit and associated software.

In a working mode, a user who wants to print any chosen text talks to the printer device and a microphone inside the voice recognition means records the voice data and said data is identified and converted into text data and stored in a data file.

In modern voice recognition circuits the recorded voice/text data could be presented in a PC-environment in a user-friendly manner, such as on a screen in a Word-file or the like. There are programs on the market today, which in association with a word processor in a computer could present the recorded voice data as a perfect text-file. This means that in association with the printer device according to the invention, recorded voice data are converted by the voice recognition means to a text data file. This file is stored in the memory and could be converted using standard software into a bitmap containing the printing pattern for the corresponding text, adapted and suitable for subsequent printing. Hence, the user "talks" to the printer and the voice recognition means interprets and translates the voice data into a text file. The text file, which in normal mode of operation in a PC could hereby be ready to present on the screen, will first have to be converted into a bitmap file, functioning as an image for the handheld printer to print out .

In another embodiment in line with the invention it is conceivable that if voice recognition means are used which requires great computer capacity, (such as e.g. Dragon Dictate® by Dragon Systems or Hello IC by Philips) , another placing of the voice recognition means could be preferred. A portable printer having wireless communication means such as Bluetooth or IR, is presented in PCT/SE01/02204 (publication no. WO 02/32182) by same applicant as present invention, hereby incorporated by reference. This document describes a portable printer in wireless connection with e.g. a mobile phone. Said phone is able to connect to Internet via a server system, which, in above-mentioned publication amongst other functions, is used for conversion of Internet related material into a printer friendly format, such as a bit-map file. Voice recognition means could be integrated in this server system to take advantage of its processor capacity.

A user wanting to dictate a text simply uses his mobile phone and calls the server and starts talking. The voice recognition means inside the server records the voice data interprets and converts it to a text file. A conversion from any text format into a bitmap could be performed with products already known on the market . The bitmap is then sent via the mobile phone (or laptop, or PDA) to the printer for subsequent printing of the recorded text . It is important to notice that a server system of a more simple complexity than what is described in said publication could be used. For example a single server could be connected to a telephone network and could serve a number of users. The printer could access said server not only via a mobile phone but also via a e.g. PDA or a laptop. It could also possible to connect a printer directly to the server if the printer device should comprise a mobile phone transceiver.

This entails that it will certainly take a little longer time until you have a print out when having the voice recognition software in a server compared with the embodiment where the software is active as an embedded system inside the printer. On the other hand, the server with its vast capacity is able to handle all known voice recognition programs. The high capacity is also an advantage if you have long texts to print out .

In another embodiment, a simplified version of the portable printer could be used if it mainly should function as a voice- to-text-converter. The communication unit 5 could be omitted when having the voice recognition circuit is mounted inside the printer.

In yet another embodiment, the printer could be equipped with a talkback module to give the user audible or visible feedback that the voice recognition circuit has interpreted the users voice correctly. The talkback module could as an alternative be implemented in the server when the embodiment as stated above, comprising a connection to a server, is used.

The printer or the server could also be equipped with a translation module in connection with the voice recognition circuit in order to print out a received word or phrase in another language. The printout could also be set to show the text in both the original language and the translation into a selected language. In an alternative the received and translated voice data could be presented in an audible manner.

Claims

1. A portable printer device comprising a construction/design body (1) , a print head (2) , optical positioning transceiver means (3) , a micro controller circuit (4) , and a source of energy (8) , said optical positioning transceiver navigating the printer by collecting data from a print surface, sending said data to the micro controller circuit (4) , said circuit (4) giving printing commands to said print head (2) , based on the position of the print head on the print surface and an image to be printed, c h a r a c t e r i z e d in that it further comprises voice recognition means for recording voice data and converting the data to a text file for subsequent printing on the print surface by the print head (2) .

2. A portable printer device as claimed in claim 1, c h a r a c t e r i z e d in that said text file is converted to a bit map file before said printing.

3. A portable printer device comprising a construction/design body (1), a print head (2), optical positioning transceiver means (3), a micro controller circuit (4), a communication unit (5) to receive and transmit printing data (8) and a source of energy (8) , said optical positioning transceiver navigating the printer by collecting data from a print surface, sending said data to the micro controller circuit (4) , said circuit (4) giving printing commands to said print head (2) , based on the position of the print head on the print surface and an image to be printed, the printer further being connected directly or indirectly to a server, c h a r a c t e r i z e d in that said server comprises voice recognition means for recording voice data and converting the data to a text file for subsequent printing on the print surface by the print head (2) .

4. A portable printer device as claimed in claim 3, c h a r a c t e r i z e d in that said text file is converted to a bit map file before said printing.

5. A portable printer device as claimed in any of claims 1-4, c h a r a c t e r i z e d in that the printer device or said server further comprises a talkback module.

6. A portable printer device as claimed in any of claims 1-5, c h a r a c t e r i z e d in that the printer device or said server further comprises a translation module.

7. A method for converting voice data to printed text by using a portable printer comprising a construction/design body (1) , a print head (2), optical positioning transceiver means (3), a micro controller circuit (4), and a source of energy (8)", said optical positioning transceiver navigating the printer by collecting data from a print surface, sending said data to the micro controller circuit (4) , said circuit (4) giving printing commands to said print head (2) , based on the position of the print head on the print surface and an image to be printed, c h a r a c t e r i z e d in that the method further comprises a recording of the voice data by voice recognition means associated with the printer, a conversion of said data to a text file and thereafter printing said text file using said print head.

8. A method for converting voice data to printed text as claimed in claim 7, c h a r a c t e r ! z e d in that said text file is converted to a bit map file before said printing.

9. A method for converting voice data to printed text as claimed in claim 7 or 8, c h a r a c t e r i z e d in that a talkback module associated with the voice recognition means repeats incoming voice data.

10. A method for converting voice data to printed text as claimed in any of claims 7-9, c h a r a c t e r i z e d in that a translation module in connection with said voice recognition means translates incoming voice data and presents the translation in a visible or audible manner.