Canon Kabushiki Kaisha

Toru Niki

Tadanori Nakatsuka

Hiroaki Ikeda

Kazuyuki Saito

Akihiro Matsumoto

Shin-Ywan Wang

Kazuma Sato

Kengo Kawamoto

Tsukasa Aiba

Yuji Sakabe

Yuko Suzuki

Nasami Kugai

A frequency of a residual amount signal which includes the absence of consumables and is issued by a printing apparatus is analyzed, whether new consumables have been attached or not is properly discriminated, and proper stock management is made.

Information processing apparatus, consumables stock management system, consumables stock managing method, consumables stock managing program, and memory medium

When data of the number of printed paper sheets is transmitted from a user device to a service center, the service center charges on the basis of a unit price corresponding to the agreement contents of each user and the number of printed paper sheets and notifies the user of the payable amount. In addition, upon receiving toner low information from the user device, the service center predicts the toner out time and issues a notification of cartridge supply and empty cartridge collection to the user.

Method, system and medium for remotely managing plural image forming apparatuses and plural types of maintenance agreements relating to the apparatuses

In a network print environment in which printers of various residual amount outputting methods exist mixedly, in an information processing apparatus for monitoring a supplement of consumables which are used in the printer which can communicate via a communication line in order to recognize that consumables have properly and newly been supplemented in each printer, there is provided a mechanism having a discriminating unit for discriminating whether the consumables have newly been supplemented into the printer or not by a discriminating method according to the residual amount outputting method of the consumables of the printer.

Information processing apparatus, monitoring method and program, and memory medium

A device driver for use in a computer system includes process steps to detect data corresponding to at least one system resource of the computer system, to determine a default operational mode from a plurality of operational modes of a device based on the data corresponding to at least one system resource, and to provide a user interface for selecting an operational mode from the plurality of operational modes.

Printer driver having adaptable default mode

A method for increasing the accuracy of image data classification in a page analysis system for analyzing image data of a document page. The method includes inputting image data of a document page as pixel data, analyzing the pixel data in order to locate all connected pixels, rectangularizing connected pixel data into blocks, analyzing each of the blocks of pixel data in order to determine the type of image data contained in the block, outputting an attribute corresponding to the type of image data determined in the analyzing step, and performing optical character recognition to attempt to recognize a character of the block of image data in the case that the analyzing step cannot determine the type of image data contained in the block.

Page analysis system

An image processor which corrects tilt of an input image without operator intervention. Projections of two partial images of an original are obtained at check points determined from input image information. A tilt angle of the original is obtained from a correction position of the projections of each partial area. The image is divided into belt-shaped small areas and shifted in accordance with the obtained tilt angle to form an image in which the tilt of the input image is corrected.

Image processing method and apparatus for detecting the tilt amount of input image data

Image processing method and apparatus are provided. Image information is inputted. The input image information is divided into a plurality of areas. Radial line segments are extended in upper, lower, left, and right directions from a point in an arbitrary notice area in the divided areas and connection information between the line segments and the input image is detected. Characteristics of the notice area are discriminated in accordance with the connection information detected. The connection information of the areas is a relative position of each area. The image information is dot information. The characteristics to be discriminated are such that the image information of the area is a headline.

Judging a logical relation between a plurality of areas based upon the

An image recognition method and apparatus in which a character region is setmented from input image information and the segmented character regions are recognized. Segmenting and recognition of character regions are performed in parallel with the input of image information. In response to to an interruption in input of image information, the recognition process is halted until the segmenting process is completed. Thereafter, recognition processing may be performed on any desired ones of the segmented character regions.

Image processing method and apparatus

In a character recognition method and apparatus, image information is input, the input image information is displayed, a desired area in the input image information is assigned, the number of characters contained in the assigned area is calculated, and the size of a picture frame for displaying a result of character recognition of the image information is determined according to the calculated number of characters.

A pattern recognizing apparatus comprises a feature vector extractor to extract a feature vector of an input pattern; a converting unit to convert the feature vector extracted by the feature vector extractor into the feature vector which is effective for selection between categories; a classification processing unit for calculating an inner product with a predetermined basic vector for the converted vector after the conversion was performed by the converting unit; and a category selecting unit for selecting and outputting a category group to which the input pattern belongs with reference to a predetermined category table on the basis of the result of the calculation by the classification processing unit.

Pattern recognizing method and apparatus

A method and apparatus for using a neural network to categorize patterns from pattern feature data derived from the patterns. The average of all the learning data of the neural network is subtracted from the pattern feature data, and the result is input to the input layer of the neural network. The neural network outputs a value for each category and the pattern is categorized based on these values. The neural network includes an intermediate layer whose bias is set to zero and which includes a sigmoid transfer function which is symmetric with respect to the origin.

Pattern recognition method and apparatus using a neural network

There are provided an image processing method and apparatus which can correctly extract desired image information from input image information and can recognize the extracted partial image information. An outline of a character or the like is traced by using an arbitrary point in the input image information as a start point. The start point is moved when the outline reaches the edge of the input image. The outline is again traced from the moved start point. The outline tracing and the movement of the start point are repeated until the character can be extracted by the outline tracing. When the number of times the start point has been moved exceeds a predetermined value, the input image information is inverted.

Growing community of inventors

Kanagawa, Japan

Toru Niki