Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha Corporation

Keisuke Iwasaki

Hisashi Saiga

Yuji Sawada

Noritoshi Kako

Yoshihiro Kitamura

Masafumi Yamanoue

Masaki Takakura

Kensaku Kagechi

Yasukuni Yamane

Kazuyuki Nako

Toshio Nomura

Kengo Takahama

Masayuki Katagiri

Yasuhisa Nakamura

Shigeki Kuga

Katsuhiko Sato

Minako Kuwata

Toru Ueda

Mikihiro Noma

Shinichi Miyazaki

Yoji Noguchi

Hitoshi Hirose

Masashi Hirosawa

Mitsuaki Nakamura

Hideo Takemura

Yoshiharu Yoshimoto

Makoto Shinkai

Hideto Hayasaki

Masao Izumi

Yasusuke Asayama

A home-appliance system is provided that may alleviate user's stress or fatigue. The interactive home-appliance system includes an utterance unit, a voice input unit for accepting input of a reply to voice, a storage unit for storing an assessment criterion for assessing stress or fatigue based on conversation with an utterer and data for outputting voice alleviating stress or fatigue, a determination unit for determining the utterer's stress or fatigue based on the assessment criterion and the reply, and a drive mechanism for performing an operation for assisting in the utterer's life. The utterance unit is configured to output an utterance based on the determination result and the data.

Interactive home-appliance system, server device, interactive home appliance, method for allowing home-appliance system to interact, and nonvolatile computer-readable data recording medium encoded with program for allowing computer to implement the method

A liquid crystal display device of the present invention includes a liquid crystal panel () having an area sensor function of detecting the position of an input from an outside source by detecting an image on a panel surface. The liquid crystal panel () (position detecting section), provided with visible light sensors (A) each containing light sensor elements () that detect the intensity of received visible light and infrared light sensors (B) each containing light sensor elements () that detect the intensity of received infrared light, which detects an input position by the visible light sensors (A) and the infrared light sensors (B) separately detecting an image on the detector surface. The liquid crystal display device further includes a backlight (light-emitting section) for irradiating the liquid crystal panel () with light containing infrared light. This achieves an area sensor capable of accurate position detection in a wide range of environmental illuminances and a liquid crystal display device equipped with such an area sensor.

Area sensor and liquid crystal display device with area sensor

A contents data creating device is configured by equipping a computer with a contents creating software. In this contents creating software, a license information file stores license information containing information describing the permitted range of input data or output data. A GUI manager module displays a choice of options indicating the range of input data or output data unpermitted with the license information, in the mode different from that of the choice of options indicating the range of input data or output data permitted. The GUI manager module performs a conversion using the range of the input data or the output data inputted from the outside, as a parameter.

Content data creating device, control method thereof, program for creating content data, and content data display device

The object of the present invention is to provide an image encoding device and decoding device which allows the maximum compression rate to be achieved with a visually uniform level of picture quality. The present invention has a characteristic pixel extractorwhich encodes input images by small region unit in accordance with an irreversible compression method, decodes the encoded data which is created, and utilizes the input image and decoded image obtained after decoding to extract characteristic pixels, a characteristic distortion calculatorwhich utilizes characteristic pixels to calculate characteristic distortion of the decoded image in relation to the input image, and an encoding parameter controllerwhich controls parameter values determining the degree of data compression in line with the extent of characteristic distortion. The regions of picture quality of a visually uniform level thus obtained are all compressed using an image compression method with a high compression efficiency, thus allowing the maximum compression rate to be achieved.

Image encoding device

A data distribution system includes a plurality of data sources each capable of transmitting a data item, and a data vending machine capable of receiving the data item from the plurality of data sources and selling the received data item to a user. The data vending machine includes a data selecting apparatus operated by a user to select a desired data item, a data source selecting apparatus connected to the data selecting apparatus for selecting, among the plurality of data sources, one that holds the data item selected by the data selecting apparatus, in accordance with a specific standard, a data receiving apparatus connected to the data source selecting apparatus for receiving selected data item from the data source selected by the data source selecting apparatus, and a data updating apparatus to which an external storage device is detachably mounted, for writing the data item received by the data receiving apparatus to the external storage device.

Data distribution system and data selling apparatus therefor, data retrieving apparatus, duplicated data detecting system, and data reproduction apparatus

An electronic book display control device capable of solving the problem of a conventional page turning method of an electronic book device that pages are turned in accordance with a value predetermined by a speed controller and hence it is difficult to turn pages flexibly in accordance with the contents of the book and the characteristics of the user. The control device is provided with a CPU () which controls the whole device, an image data storage unit () in which the contents of the book are stored as image data, an image data control unit () which receives the image data and performs the required control, a display preparation image data memory unit () in which image data of the page being displayed and the page to be displayed next are stored, and a display unit () on which information concerning the image data and information concerning the operation of the electronic book are displayed. The data displayed on the display unit at a specific time in a page turning period are stored in a page turning data memory unit () and the column information of the page turning data is stored in a column information storage table (). In accordance with the column information, the address of the display preparation image data memory unit () and the image data on the page being displayed and the page to be displayed next are selected by a display changeover control unit ().

Display control device and reproduction display device for electronic books

In an image processing device, in order to display an image on a display device having nonlinear gradation characteristics, first, a contrast estimation unit () estimates the contrast of the image represented by the image data () input from an image input device. Next, a luminance correction unit () subjects the pixel data constituting the image data () to a luminance conversion process on the basis of the estimated contrast and the gradation characteristics. Furthermore, the pixel data may sometimes be subjected to a sharpening process. The level of the sharpening performed for one or a plurality of character regions in the image represented by the image data () is higher than that for the pixel data of the pixels in remaining regions other than the character regions in the image. The image data () comprising the pixel data subjected to these processes is supplied to the display device. Therefore, the visibility of the image displayed on the display device can be improved.

Image processing device and image processing method

Reproduction means of a general-purpose computer () reproduces a digital content only when a device ID included in the digital content corresponds to a device ID of a device by which it is intended to reproduce the digital content. When the device ID of the general-purpose computer () is altered, a recovery program for recovering an original device ID is downloaded from a recovery program generation server (), thereby the device ID is recovered. With this arrangement, it is possible to provide a communication system which is capable of recovering a device ID when, for instance, the device ID is altered on account of the reinstall of a program such as an OS or content player.

Communication system, terminal device, reproduction program, storage medium storing the reproduction program, server machine, server program, and storage medium storing the server program

An image compression apparatus capable of efficiently encoding an image without causing color deviation to the eye compresses luminance element image data and two types of chrominance element image data each consisting of a plurality of blocks. The image compression apparatus includes: a resolution determination processing section () adaptively setting a resolution of each block during reduction according to a predetermined criterion for each of the luminance element image data and the two types of chrominance element image data, and creating resolution information; a data creation processing section () connected to the resolution determination processing section (), and creating data having each block reduced based on the resolution information for each of the luminance element image data and the two types of chrominance element image data; and an encoder (A,B) connected to the resolution determination section () and the data creation processing section (), and encoding an output of each of the resolution information and the data creation processing section ().

Image compression device and image decompressing device, and computer-readable recorded medium on which program for allowing computer to execute image compressing method and image decompressing method

An image coding apparatus corresponding to a standard scheme of binary image compression and having the compression efficiency of a gray scale image improved includes: a bit plane generator () dividing unitary image data into a plurality of bit planes determined according to the number of bits forming each pixel, an image preprocessor () connected to the bit plane generator () to arrange bit data of the same position forming a plurality of bit planes in close proximity to combine into a single bit plane, and a data compressor () connected to the image preprocessor () to compress an image of the single bit plane.

Image encoding device and method therefor, image decoding apparatus and method therefor, and computer-readable recorded medium on which image encoding program and image decoding program are recorded

The object of the present invention is to provide an image encoding device and decoding device which allows the maximum compression rate to be achieved with a visually uniform level of picture quality. The present invention has a characteristic pixel extractorwhich encodes input images by small region unit in accordance with an irreversible compression method, decodes the encoded data which is created, and utilises the input image and decoded image obtained after decoding to extract characteristic pixels, a characteristic distortion calculatorwhich utilises characteristic pixels to calculate characteristic distortion of the decoded image in relation to the input image, and an encoding parameter controllerwhich controls parameter values determining the degree of data compression in line with the extent of characteristic distortion. The regions of picture quality of a visually uniform level thus obtained are all compressed using an image compression method with a high compression efficiency, thus allowing the maximum compression rate to be achieved.

A display device capable of allowing a page to be turned to give a feeling as if a page is actually turned includes a memory for storing information, a display for displaying information, a page turn instruction unit for detecting that the unit itself is tilted to output a detection signal indicating the direction of the tilt, and a display control unit for receiving an instruction from the page turn instruction unit to read information of the next or previous page from the memory according to the direction of the tilt and display the read information on the display.

Display device

An electronic copyrighted work distribution management system includes an electronic copyrighted work sales apparatus selling an electronic copyrighted work, a copyright management apparatus administering a copyright royalty of an electronic copyrighted work sold by the electronic copyrighted work sales apparatus, a seller terminal used by a seller, and a copyright terminal used by a copyright holder. The electronic copyrighted work sales apparatus calculates and transmits to the copyright management apparatus the copyright royalty of a selected electronic copyrighted work. The copyright management apparatus stores the received copyright royalty data for each copyright holder. Since the copyright management apparatus receives and stores for each copyright holder the copyright royalty data transmitted from the electronic copyrighted work sales apparatus, the copyright royalty can be administered.

Copyright management apparatus

A data processing device enabling stable data processing reads digital data including object data, an identifier indicating a type of the object data, and an attached program associated with at least one identifier for performing a predetermined process for object data associated with the identifier, to process the object data. The data processing device includes a program storing unit for recording an internal program including a processing module associated with the at least one identifier, an input unit for reading the digital data, and an external program executing unit for processing the object data by one of the attached program and the processing module when the attached program associated with the identifier of the read object data is present in the digital data.

Growing community of inventors

Ikoma-gun, Japan

Keisuke Iwasaki