Apparatus and method for automatic form recognition and pagination
First Claim
1. A system for automatically identifying a form or a page in multi-page form, comprising:
- a digitizing pen;
a digitizing tablet, further comprising;
a support surface for supporting a form; and
means to detect pen stroke data when the digitizing pen is used to enter data in data entry fields on the form placed on the support surface, said pen stroke data having content information that is information requested by the form and location information that indicates the location on the form where the pen stroke data was entered; and
form selection means to select an electronic bit image of the form which data was entered on by the digitizing pen by selecting the best match of the location information of the pen stroke data, indicating the location on the form where the pen stroke data was entered, with automatically determined location of a data entry field boundary of each of at least one data entry field in an electronic bit image of at least one form;
whereby the system can be used to automatically identify a form being used based on the location information of the pen stroke data.
1 Assignment
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Accused Products
Abstract
A pen-based system that automatically identifies either single page or multi-page forms when data is a written on paper copies of the form. The system captures pen stroke data as an untrained user fills out the paper form attached to its surface. The sequence and location of the raw pen-stroke data is analyzed to determine which form the user was filling out and which field on each page was the intended field for the subsets of stroke data. The form/field identification method allows the electronic clipboard to be used as if it were an ordinary clipboard. One of several single or multi-page forms in the selected, and attached to the clipboard without any special attention to its positioning. The user can fill out fields in any order skipping between pages at will, leaving fields blank, etc. and having no other interaction with the clipboard.
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Citations
36 Claims
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1. A system for automatically identifying a form or a page in multi-page form, comprising:
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a digitizing pen;
a digitizing tablet, further comprising;
a support surface for supporting a form; and
means to detect pen stroke data when the digitizing pen is used to enter data in data entry fields on the form placed on the support surface, said pen stroke data having content information that is information requested by the form and location information that indicates the location on the form where the pen stroke data was entered; and
form selection means to select an electronic bit image of the form which data was entered on by the digitizing pen by selecting the best match of the location information of the pen stroke data, indicating the location on the form where the pen stroke data was entered, with automatically determined location of a data entry field boundary of each of at least one data entry field in an electronic bit image of at least one form;
whereby the system can be used to automatically identify a form being used based on the location information of the pen stroke data. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 14)
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4. A system for automatically identifying a form or a page in multi-page form, comprising:
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a digitizing pen;
a digitizing tablet, further comprising;
a support surface for supporting a form; and
means to detect pen stroke data when the digitizing pen is used to enter data in data entry fields on the form placed on the support surface, said pen stroke having content information that is information requested by the form and location information that indicates the location on the form where the pen stroke data was entered; and
form selection means to select an electronic image of the form which data was entered on by the digitizing pen by selecting the best match of the pen stroke data with the electronic images of the forms;
whereby the system can be used to automatically identify the form being used based on the pen stroke data; and
wherein the form selection means compares the location information from the pen stroke data with the location of data entry fields on forms, and selects the electronic image of the form related to the form on which the data was entered by selecting the best match of the location information with the location of the data entry fields on the electronic images of the forms;
whereby the electronic form image is selected by determining the location of data entered on the form; and
further comprising;
means to calculate a data bounding box by identifying a discrete block of writing in the pen stroke data;
means to calculate a field bounding box for each data entry field on each form;
means to compare the distances between the corners of the data bounding box and the corners of the field bounding boxes; and
means to select the electronic image of the form which has the minimum distances between the corners of the data bounding box and the corners of the field bounding boxes;
whereby an electronic image of a form is selected based on the proximity and overlap of the data bounding box and the field bounding box. - View Dependent Claims (5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13)
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15. A method of automatically identifying a form or a page in multi-page form, including the steps of:
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using a digitizing pen and a digitizing tablet to generate pen stroke data when data is entered in data entry fields on a form, the pen stroke data including location information that indicates the location on the form where the pen stroke data was entered; and
using the pen stroke data to select an electronic bit image of the form on which the pen stroke data was entered by selecting the best match of the location information of the pen stroke data indicating the location on the form where the pen stroke data was entered, with automatically determined location of a data entry field boundary of each of at least one data entry field in an electronic bit image of at least one form;
whereby the method can be used to automatically identify the form being used based on the location information of the pen stroke data. - View Dependent Claims (16, 17, 27)
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18. A method of automatically identifying a form or a page in multi-page form, including the steps of:
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using a digitizing pen and a digitizing tablet to generate pen stroke data when data is entered in data entry fields on a form;
using the pen stroke data to select an electronic image of the form on which the pen stroke data was entered by selecting the best match of the pen stroke data with data entry fields on the electronic images of the forms;
whereby the system can be used to automatically identify the form being used based on the pen stroke data;
including location information in the pen stroke data when the pen stroke data is generated;
comparing the location information with the location of data entry fields on electronic images of the forms to determine a best match;
selecting the electronic image of the form based on the best match;
whereby the electronic form image is selected by determining the location of data entered on the form;
identifying a discrete block of writing in the pen stroke data and calculating a data bounding box defining the discrete block of data;
calculating a field bounding box for each data entry field on each form; and
comparing the distances between the corners of the data bounding box and the corners of the field bounding boxes, and selecting the electronic image of the form which has the minimum distances between the corners of the data bounding box and the corners of the field bounding boxes;
whereby an electronic image of a form is selected based on the proximity and overlap of the data bounding box and the field bounding box. - View Dependent Claims (19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26)
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28. A method of automatically identifying a form or a page in multi-page form, including the steps of:
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using a digitizing pen and a digitizing tablet to generate pen stroke data when data is entered in data entry fields on a form;
using the pen stroke data to select an electronic image of the form on which the pen stroke data was entered by selecting the best match of the pen stroke data with data entry fields on the electronic images of the forms;
whereby the system can be used to automatically identify the form being used based on the pen stroke data;
generating a binary bitmap of data from the pen stroke data;
comparing the binary bitmap of data from the pen stroke data with a binary bitmap of each page of an electronic image of a form, wherein the input fields of the electronic image of the form have no pixels and the non-input fields of the forms have pixels; and
selecting the best match between the pen stroke data and the electronic image of the form by identifying the form page that results in the least number of overlapping pixels between the pen stroke, data and the electronic image of the form.
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29. A method of identifying a form from a pen stroke data that is generated when filling out that paper form, including the steps of:
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placing a paper form on a digitizing tablet;
capturing pen stroke data using a digitizing pen;
isolating the pen stroke data into groups separated by the time at which the marks were made, their location on the page of the form, and the proximity of the pen stroke data to other pen stroke data on the page;
matching each isolated group of pen stroke data to a field on one of a set of electronic image of the forms by minimizing the distance between the corners of a box delimiting the isolated group of pen stroke data and the corners of a box delimiting the fields on each electronic image of the form; and
selecting an electronic image of the form for which the combined distances between the corners of the group of pen stroke data and the fields are a minimum. - View Dependent Claims (30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36)
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Specification