Method and system for recognizing routing information on letters and parcels

• US 6,520,407 B1
• Filed: 05/03/2000
• Issued: 02/18/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 11/04/1997
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Siemens AG
• Original Assignee: Siemens AG
• Inventors: Nieswand, Benno, Zehren, Jürgen
• Primary Examiner(s): Le, Thien M.
• Assistant Examiner(s): St. Cyr, Daniel
• Application Number:
  US09/530,651
• Time in Patent Office: 1,021 Days
• Field of Search: 235/375, 235/376, 235/383, 235/385, 235/454, 235/462.01, 235/462.14
• US Class Current: 235/375
• CPC Class Codes: B07C 3/20 Arrangements for facilitating the visual reading of addresses, e.g. display arrangements coding stations
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/987 with the intervention of an operator

Abstract

The invention relates to the recognition of routing information on mail items with the aid of automatic OCR readers and video coding. For a fast and inexpensive reading in the case of unclear results in one the automatic OCR process steps, this step is arrested in the current state. With the aid of the previously determined clear and unclear results/intermediate results, a video coding job is automatically transmitted to one or several video coding stations, along with the presently available results and the operations to be carried out for obtaining clear results for this process step. With the clear video coding results, which replace the unclear results, the paused OCR process step is successfully completed and the following process step is started.

Claims

1. An automatic reading method for recognizing routing information on mail items with the aid of OCR processing of the recorded and stored images of the mail item surfaces containing the routing information, for which the automatic reading occurs during parallel and sequential process steps and is carried out through determination of regions of interest (1) (ROI), reading of stamps (2), line separation, segmenting, character and word recognition (4), address interpretation (5) with address analysis and address comparison (6) in an address data bank, carrying out a respectively following process step only if the preceding step yielded a clear result, and video coding routing information that was not identified clearly in a video-coding device (20) with video coding stations (7) having high-resolution monitors on which the transmitted, respective images with the routing information are displayed;

and wherein in case of unclear results during respectively one of the automatic process steps (1-6) for reading, maintaining this process step in the current state, and based on the previously respectively determined clear and unclear results and intermediate results, automatically transmitting a job for video coding to one or several video coding stations (7), along with the information on unclear and missing results and the operations to be carried out for obtaining clear results during this process step, and replacing the ambiguous results with the clear coding results, to cause the paused process step for the automatic reading to be completed successfully and the following process step to then be started.

2. The method according to claim 1, including:

during the video coding, displaying an image containing the routing information to be read, the task(s) to be solved and the results and/or partial results determined for this so far on the monitor of the respective video coding station (7).

3. The method according to claim 1 wherein in the video-coding device, each video coding station (7) is responsible only for a portion of the different video coding tasks, and further including distributing the coding tasks based on the job category and the responsible video coding stations for this, and based on the momentary workload of the video coding stations (7).

4. An arrangement for recognizing routing information on mail items, comprising:

an automatic OCR processing unit (11) with different function groups for determining the regions of interest, the line separation, segmenting, character and word recognition, address analysis, and address comparison with a connected address data bank, a context memory wherein the results, partial results, the status of the routing information determination and the input data are stored, and

a video-coding device (20) with at least one video coding station (7) for the routing information that is not read clearly by the OCR processing unit (11) wherein the automatic OCR processing unit (11) is such that for unclear or missing intermediate results and/or results of the function groups, the function groups are respectively paused in the current state and, accordingly, a job message for video coding the tasks not clearly solved is triggered and sent to the video-coding device (20), and the OCR processing unit (11) continues the interrupted processing with the clear video coding results once these are received.

5. The arrangement according to claim 4, wherein the OCR processing unit (11) is connected to at least one job formulator (13), which receives the job signal for the respective reading function, searches the context memory (12) for the unclear or missing results of the respective reading function, formulates a job from the ambiguous results determined by the respective function group of the OCR processing unit (11) and the coding task, consisting of an image of the mail item surface with the routing information searched for and/or read, and transmits this job to the video-coding device (20).

6. The arrangement according to claim 5, wherein a job formulator (13) that is connected to the video-coding device (20) is connected downstream of each function group of the OCR processing unit (11).

7. The arrangement according to claim 4, wherein at least one response processor (14) that is linked to the video-coding device (20) is connected to the OCR processing unit (11) and inserts the response data from the video-coding device (20) into the context memory (12), deletes the unclear results, as well as transmits a signal for continuing the reading process to the OCR processing unit (11).

8. The arrangement according to claim 7, wherein a response processor (14) that is linked to the video-coding device (20) is connected to each module in the OCR processing unit (11).

9. The arrangement according to claim 4, wherein each video coding station (7) is responsible only for a portion of the coding tasks during the routing information determination and that the video coding stations (7) are connected via a job distributor (21) to the input of the video-coding device (20), wherein the job distributor (21) distributes the video coding tasks to the stations in accordance with the task responsibilities and workload status reports for the video coding stations (7), stored in a connected coding station data bank (22).

10. The arrangement according to claim 4 wherein a fast automatic online routing information reader is connected upstream of the automatic OCR processing unit (11), wherein the respective image with a reading job is transmitted to the automatic OCR processing unit (11) only if the reading result is unclear.

11. The arrangement according to claim 4, wherein several images with routing information to be determined are processed simultaneously.