Compact configurable scanning computer terminal
View Patent ↗A compact transactional document-scanning terminal that conveniently capture an electronic image of most forms of printed documents at distributed locations, to capture either automatically from the scanned document or manually by operator interactivity all necessary process parameters or codes, to perform an electronic transaction in order to forward all the information to a remote computer or alternatively for local storage within the terminal, and to produce an electronic receipt and/or a paper receipt as a proof that the scan and store transaction has been successful and for later retrieval of information associated with the scanned document. The compact transactional document-scanning terminal may be configured to respond to various customer specifications. For some forms of documents, an image analysis is immediately performed subsequent to the scan in order to extract all or part of the printed information, apply recognition algorithms to decode information and complete automatically the transaction without further human intervention.
1. A modular computer terminal, comprising:
a document scanner module;
control and processing electronics;
a display module;
a keyboard module, wherein the modules each include releasable interlocking clips allowing the moldules to be attached to or separated free from one another;
an integrated printer, the integrated printer being configured to print a receipt after the document module scans a document, the receipt including a readable code linking the printed receipt to information associated with the scanned document, and
a code reader configured to read the code, the display module displaying the information associated with the scanned document when the code reader reads the code printed on the receipt.
2. The modular computer terminal of claim 1 , further comprising:
a terminal base housing the control and processing electronic, and
a terminal casing removably fitted to the terminal base, the terminal casing enclosing the printer.
3. The modular computer terminal of claim 2 , wherein the terminal casing is configured to enclose a rotatably mounted cylindrical paper roll that supplies paper to the printer, flat edges of the paper roll being substantially parallel to the base surface of the terminal.
4. The modular computer terminal of claim 1 , further comprising a random access mass storage device, the storage device storing and allowing access to the information associated with the scanned document.
5. The modular computer terminal of claim 1 , wherein the integrated printer includes a read-after-print mechanism to detect printing failures.
6. A modular computer terminal, comprising:
a document scanner module;
control and processing electronics;
a display module;
a keyboard module;
an integrated printer, the printer being configured to print a receipt after the document scanner module scans a document, the receipt including a readable code linking the printed receipt to information associated with the scanned document, and
a code reader configured to read the code, the display module displaying the information associated with the scanned document when the code reader reads the code printed on the receipt,
wherein the modules each include quick release interlocking clips allowing the modules to be attached to or separated from one another.
7. The modular computer terminal of claim 6 , further comprising:
a terminal base housing the control and processing electronic, and
a terminal casing removably fitted to the terminal base, the terminal casing enclosing the printer.
8. The modular computer terminal of claim 7 , wherein the terminal casing is configured to enclose a rotatably mounted cylindrical paper roll that supplies paper to the printer, flat edges of the paper roll being substantially parallel to the base surface of the terminal.
9. The modular computer terminal of claim 6 , further comprising a random access mass storage device, the storage device storing and allowing access to the information associated with the scanned document.
10. The modular computer terminal of claim 6 , wherein the integrated printer includes a read-after-print mechanism to detect printing failures.