Ricoh Company, Ltd.

Yoshimichi Kanda

Hajime Ichimura

Makoto Hidaka

Yasuyuki Nomizu

Shinji Yamakawa

Tomio Sasaki

Midori Aida

Kouichi Noguchi

Keiichi Nomura

Hitoshi Ishii

Ouji Maruyama

Toshihiko Kuroi

An apparatus includes a function control device to provide a specific function to the apparatus, a network control device to control communication between the apparatus and other apparatus via a network, and a main control device to control operation of the apparatus. The network control device operates while communication with the function control device is being cut off when the function control device is not supplied with power, The function control device includes a user circuit to detect restarting of a power supply to the function control device, and establish communication with the network control device in response to detection of restarting of the power supply to the function control device. The main control device controls communication between the apparatus and the other apparatus, through communication established between the main control device and the function control device and communication established between the function control device and the network control device.

Function control device, apparatus including same, and communication establishing method

In a data processing apparatus of the present invention, a disk unit storing a disk is mounted on the apparatus such that the surface of the disk is parallel to the direction of a shock or an impact. This protects the disk unit and therefore the disk from the influence of shocks and impacts as far as possible.

Data processing apparatus and method of using the same

An image forming apparatus includes a speech input unit that collects a sound including an ambient sound and a speech from a user for operating the image forming apparatus, a speech recognizing unit that recognizes the speech from collected sound, and an operation control unit that changes, when speech recognizing unit recognizes the speech, an operation state of the image forming apparatus.

Image forming apparatus, method of controlling the same based on speech recognition, and computer program product

A CPU determines whether the intended use of the image data to be stored in a plurality of HDDs has a first-type purpose, which requires storing temporarily stored image data for carrying out output processing of the image data, or a second-type purpose, which requires long-term preservation of the image data. If the first-type intended use is determined, a first-type mode for saving is selected, wherein the image data to be stored are divided and each divided set of image data is stored into one HDD. If the second-type intended use is determined, a second-type mode for saving is selected, wherein the same image data part is saved in a plurality of storage means.

Image data storage system

The image formation apparatus comprises a plurality of hard disk drives which store image data and a hard disk drive array control integrated circuit which controls reading/writing of image data from/into the hard disk drives. The hard disk drive array control integrated circuit executes setting of parameters, issuance of commands, and reading of statuses for all the hard disk drives substantially at the same time, divides the image data into pieces, and executes direct memory access transfer of the pieces of the image data to the hard disk drives substantially at the same time.

Method of and apparatus for forming image

In a digital copier which allow the quality of an output image to be adjusted in a plurality of levels, a scanner reads a document image and generates corresponding image data. An analog-to-digital converter transforms the image data to a pixel-by-pixel electric signal. The electric signal is written to an image memory. An image processing section reads a particular portion of the image (e.g. one-fifth in the subscanning direction) out of the memory repeatedly, while changing density each time. The results of such processing are sent to a recording section and printed on a single paper as a combined image. As a result, partial images representative of a particular density each are printed on a single paper. This not only promotes easy evaluation but also saves papers.

Digital copier

An image processing apparatus for image compression and decompression in which occurrence of moire in a reconstructed image is eliminated. The apparatus includes an encoder part for encoding an image into a compressed image, and a decoder part for decoding the compressed image into a reconstructed image. The encoder part includes an input part, a predictive coder, a subtracter, an ADCT encoder and a code memory. The predictive coder and subtracter act to remove high-frequency components prior to the calculation of the DCT coefficients by the ADCT encoder, thereby preventing moire in the reconstructed image.

Image processing apparatus for preventing occurrence of moire in a

An image processing apparatus in which a moire occurring in a half tone area can be eliminated by a suitable filter. A plurality of data blocks comprising N*N pixel data are transformed by means of a two-dimensional orthogonal transform so as to obtain an N*N matrix transformation factor block. An evaluation block is prepared which comprises N*N transformation factors each of which is the mean value of the absolute values of corresponding factors from a data block being considered and data blocks surrounding the data block to be determined. Mean values A[i] and B[i] (i=0 to L-1) of predetermined transformation factors are calculated, A[i] being mean values of factors included in a number L of first areas consecutively positioned along a diagonal line of the evaluation block, B[i] being mean values of factors included in a number L of second areas positioned adjacent to and lower in frequency to the corresponding first areas. A filter selection signal is generated which corresponds to the number i when a condition is satisfied where A[i]&gt;B[i] and A[i]&gt;threshold value th1. The pixel data corresponding to the evaluation block is smoothed by the selected filter.

Reduction of moire by adaptively selecting a smoothing filter for

An image processing apparatus for image compression and decompression includes a smoothing part for smoothing image data of a reconstructed image by using a smoothing filter selected from among a plurality of smoothing filters having different smoothing effects, an averaging part for producing a set of values of averages of coefficients produced through discrete cosine transformation with respect to a plurality of blocks in the reconstructed image so that a distribution of the averages of the coefficients for a target block is generated, and a selection part for generating a signal to enable the smoothing part to select the smoothing filter by detecting whether or not peak values in the distribution of the averages of the coefficients, generated by the averaging part, appear substantially on a diagonal line of the target block passing a lowest-order position through a highest-order position of the target block.

An image area discriminating method surely distinguishes a character image area and a halftone image area printed on a single document in response to image data outputted by an image reader. An image of interest is divided into N.times.N blocks and subjected to two-dimensional orthogonal transform block by block to produce an N.times.N coefficient pattern. The blocks each is compared with coefficient patterns prepared beforehand and matching the characteristics of character images to see if the block lies in a character image area or in a halftone image area. The N.times.N coefficients may be replaced with N.times.N vectors. Then, a necessary number of vectors are selected out of the N.times.N vectors to generate a .upsilon.-dimensional coefficient vector, and it is compared with vecotrs prepared beforehand for character identification and matching the characteristics of character images.

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Kanagawa, Japan

Yoshimichi Kanda