Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha Corporation

Morihiro Katsurada

Sadaaki Shimonaga

Minehiro Konya

Hideaki Tanaka

Masafumi Matsumoto

Norihiro Ochi

Hirosuke Miki

Misuzu Doi

Yumiko Kawazoe

Shigekazu Fujiwara

Koji Shimada

Hiroshi Yamada

Ryoji Kambara

Hideaki Tanka

A power information display device includes: a power information acquisition unit which acquires information relating to a remaining capacity of a storage battery, and information relating to power consumption of devices that use power of the storage battery; and a display unit which displays usable time of the storage battery when a plurality of devices are operating, and usable time when at least one of the plurality of devices has stopped.

Power information display device, power information display system and power information display method

A telephone line interface section, which has a selector switch for selectively connecting two of a facsimile section, a telephone line and an information unit such as a personal computer, is provided. The telephone line interface section is provided with a telephone line monitor which detects an ON/OFF state of a start switch for directing the facsimile section to be operated and detects existence or non-existence of a DC loop current which is a connecting signal at the time when the facsimile section is connected to an external telephone switchboard via the telephone line. The selector switch connects the facsimile section to the information unit based upon the telephone line monitor when the start switch is in the ON state and the connecting signal is not detected. As a result, in the case where the facsimile section is used as a scanner and printer of the information unit, the facsimile section can be simply connected to the information unit.

Facsimile apparatus and communication method thereof

An image reader includes a scanner for reading a two-dimensional image and converting the read data into two-dimensional image data, a memory for storing the two-dimensional image data, correction circuit for correcting the two-dimensional image data so that the direction of character strings included in the two-dimensional image data coincides with the main scanning direction, and a coding circuit for reading the corrected two-dimensional image data from the memory in the order along the main scanning direction. The facsimile machine includes such an image reader, and a transmission circuit for transmitting the coded image data to another facsimile machine.

Image reader and facsimile machine using such image reader

A communication charge management unit of a communication unit in the Integrated Services Digital Network comprises a memory (11; 21; 41) for storing the communication charge for each of plurality of identification information. The identification information is one of or a combination of user identification information specifying the user of the communication unit, a sub address specifying each of the plurality of terminal units which the communication unit includes, and communication mode identification information specifying each of the plurality of communication modes of the communication unit. The management unit comprises a control accumulating unit (7; 27; 43) updating the corresponding communication charge stored in the memory, in response to the identification information generated at the time of calling by the communication unit and the communication charge information transmitted from a center at the time of communication termination. This control accumulating unit updates the memory contents by adding the current transmitted communication charge to the communication charge stored in the memory.

Communication charge manageable digital communication unit and a method

Disclosed is a facsimile device enabling data transmission in high efficiency independently of the direction in which an original is drawn into the facsimile device. The facsimile device includes a scanner for reading the original, an image memory for storing a read image signal, a circuit for detecting the direction of text lines of a read pixel signal, a circuit for determining whether or not the text line direction is close to a longitudinal direction or a lateral direction of arrangement of memory cells in the image memory, a circuit for executing an operation for rotating the image signal by a predetermined angle when a determination is made that the text line direction is closer to the longitudinal direction, a compression circuit for reading the rotated image signal in the lateral direction of the arrangement of the memory cells, to compress the read image signal, and a transmission circuit for transmitting the compressed signal onto lines.

Facsimile device with skew correction and text line direction detection

To efficiently process character blocks including mutually contacting characters by an optical character reader, not only are histograms prepared in a known manner but after candidate positions are determined from a histogram according to a specified set of criteria, their combinations are considered and the characters which are recognized corresponding to each combination of candidate positions are used to obtain average similarity values. Spellcheck routines and these average similarity values are considered together to identify characters which are contacting each other.

Method of processing character blocks with optical character reader

After an optical character reader initially identifies individual characters in a character array by matching their images with dictionary patterns, its character recognition system assigns upper and lower labels to the characters according to their highest and lowest positions relative to the character array. If these assigned values contradict with the labels preassigned to the identified characters, corrections are made accordingly and certain frequently occurring types of errors are checked in terms of these labels. Upper and lower case letters which are shaped similarly and certain similarly looking symbols can thus be correctly identified.

Character recognition system for optical character reader

After an optical character reader scans a line and image data corresponding thereto are stored, vacant regions perpendicular to the direction of the line are identified. Thereafter, candidate character positions are identified firstly by starting from the beginning of the line and secondly by starting from the end thereof. If the results of the two analyses coincide, they are identified as character positions where neighboring characters are separated. If they do not, a pattern matching method is used with stored patterns at each candidate character position to determine whether it really represents a character position.

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Nara, Japan

Morihiro Katsurada