Reducing processing latency in optical character recognition for portable reading machine
A portable reading device includes a computing device and a computer readable medium storing a computer program product to receive an image and select a section of the image to process. The product processes the section of the image with a first process and when the first process is finished processing the section of the image, process a result of the first process with a second process. While the second process is processing, repeats the first process on another section of the image.
1. A computer program product tangibly embodied on a computer readable medium comprising instructions for causing a reading device to:
receive an image;
select a section of the image to process;
process the section of the image with a first process; wherein instructions to process the section with a first process, further comprise instructions to:
apply optical character recognition to the section of the image;
determine when a threshold number of words has been recognized on the section of the image; and wherein the instructions
process the recognized words in a text to speech synthesizer to have the text to speech synthesizer read the words to the user, while the instructions apply optical character recognition to the another section of the image; and when the first process is finished processing the section of the image,
process a result of the first process with a second, different process, and while the second process is processing the result,
repeat the first process on another section of the image.
2. The computing program product of claim 1 wherein the first process is optical character recognition.
3. The computing program product of claim 2 wherein the second process is text to speech synthesis that uses as input a text output from the optical character recognition.
4. The computing program product of claim 1 wherein instructions to select are based on a user input corresponding to the user having the product in a directed reading mode responsive to the user directly the reading device to a particular area of the image.
5. The computing program product of claim 1 wherein instructions to select are based on selecting a first available portion of the image.
6. The computing program product of claim 1 wherein instructions to select are based on user-initiated input.
7. The computing program product of claim 1 wherein instructions to select are based on a default.
8. The computing program product of claim 1 wherein instructions to process the section with a first process, further comprise instructions to:
determine if there are more sections in the image to process and if so select a next section of the image to apply optical character recognition to, until there are no more sections to apply optical character recognition to.
9. The computing program product of claim 1 wherein the instructions permit a reading device to continually “read” to the user with lower latency and fewer silent periods than would occur without the processing performed by the product.
10. The computing program product of claim 1 wherein the instructions permit the image to be processed in different orders including at least one of starting at a default position, pressing on a corresponding part of a touch screen, using a gesture to describe a command that selects the section of the image, speech input, typed input, and using a template that is mapped to the image.
11. The computing program product of claim 1 further comprising instructions to:
process the image using a template that is mapped to the image; and
apply voice recognition to a user's verbal commands to select a part of the template that maps to the section of the image, causing the instructions to process that section of the image.
12. The computing program product of claim 1 further comprising instructions to:
determine whether the image is upside down, by determining that a relatively low number of words were recognized by the first process; and
change the orientation of the section of the image by 180 degrees and apply optical character recognition to the section of the image in the changed orientation; and
if changing the orientation produces enough words to surpass the threshold, then the instructions process all remaining sections of the image by changing the orientation of the remaining sections of the image.
13. A computer-implemented method of processing an image in a reading device, the method comprising:
receiving an image in a computer;
selecting a section of the image to process;
processing in the computer the section of the image with a first process, the first process including;
applying optical character recognition to the section of the image;
determining when a threshold number of words has been recognized on the section of the image; and
processing the recognized words in a text to speech synthesizer to have the text to speech synthesizer read the words to the user, while applying optical character recognition to the another section of the image; and when the first process is finished processing the section of the image,
processing in the computer a result of the first process with a second, different process, and while the second process is processing the image,
repeating the first process in the computer on another section of the image.
14. The method of claim 13 wherein the first process is optical character recognition.
15. The method of claim 14 wherein the second process is text to speech synthesis that uses as input a text output from the optical character recognition.
16. The method of claim 13 wherein selecting is based on a user input corresponding to the user having the product in a directed reading mode.
17. The method of claim 13 wherein selecting is based on selecting a first available portion of the image.
18. The method of claim 13 wherein selecting is based on user-initiated input.
19. The method of claim 13 wherein selecting is based on a default.
20. The method of claim 13 wherein processing the section with a first process, further comprises:
determining if there are more sections in the image to process and if so select a next section of the image to apply optical character recognition to, until there are no more sections to apply optical character recognition to.
21. The method of claim 13 wherein the method permits a reading device to continually “reads” to the user with lower latency and fewer silent periods than would occur without the processing performed by the method.
22. The method of claim 13 wherein the image is processed in different orders including at least one of starting at a default position, pressing on a corresponding part of a touch screen, using a gesture to describe a command that selects the section of the image, speech input, typed input, and using a template that is mapped to the image.
23. The method of claim 13 further comprising:
processing the section image using a template that is mapped to the image; and
applying voice recognition to a user's verbal commands to select a part of the template that maps to the section of the image, causing the instructions to process that section of the image.
24. The method of claim 13 further comprising:
determining whether the image is upside down, by determining that a relatively low number of words were recognized by the first process;
changing the orientation of the section of the image by 180 degrees while applying optical character recognition to the section of the image; and
determining if changing the orientation produced enough words to surpass the threshold, then processing all remaining sections of the image by changing the orientation.
25. A portable reading device comprising:
a computing device;
a computer readable medium storing a computer program product comprising instructions for causing the reading device to:
receive an image;
select a section of the image to process;
process the section of the image with a first process; wherein instructions to process the section with a first process, further comprise instructions to:
apply optical character recognition to the section of the image;
determine when a threshold number of words has been recognized on the section of the image; and wherein the instructions
process the recognized words in a text to speech synthesizer to have the text to speech synthesizer read the words to the user, while the instructions apply optical character recognition to the another section of the image; and when the first process is finished processing the section of the image,
process a result of the first process with a second, different process; and while the second process is processing,
repeat the first process on another section of the image.
26. The portable reading device of claim 25 wherein the first process is optical character recognition.
27. The portable reading device of claim 25 wherein the second process is text to speech synthesis that uses as input a text output from the optical character recognition.
28. The portable reading device of claim 25 wherein instructions to select are based on a user input corresponding to the user having the portable reading device in a directed reading mode.
29. The portable reading device of claim 25 wherein instructions to select are based on selecting the first available portion of the image.
30. The portable reading device of claim 25 wherein instructions to select are based on user-initiated input.
31. The portable reading device of claim 25 wherein instructions to select are based on a default.
32. The portable reading device of claim 25 wherein instructions to process the section with a first process, further comprise instructions to:
determine if there are more sections in the image to process and if so select a next section of the image to apply optical character recognition to, until there are no more sections to apply optical character recognition to.
33. The portable reading device of claim 25 wherein the instructions permit a reading device to continually “read” to the user with lower latency and fewer silent periods than would occur without the processing performed by the product.
34. The portable reading device of claim 25 wherein the instructions permit the image to be processed in different orders including at least one of starting at a default position, pressing on a corresponding part of a touch screen, using a gesture to describe a command that selects the section of the image, speech input, typed input, and using a template that is mapped to the image.
35. The portable reading device of claim 25 further comprising instructions to:
process the image using a template that is mapped to the image; and
apply voice recognition to a user's verbal commands to select a part of the template that maps to the section of the image, causing the instructions to process that section of the image.
36. The portable reading device of claim 25 further comprising instructions to:
determine whether the image is upside down, by determining that a relatively low number of words were recognized by the first process; and
change the orientation of the section of the image by 180 degrees and apply optical character recognition to the section of the image in the changed orientation; and
determine if changing the orientation produces enough words to surpass the threshold, then the instructions process all remaining sections of the image by changing the orientation.