Camera-typing interface for ubiquitous information services

We propose a new technology called the camera-typing interface, which can read printed characters such as URLs with a low-resolution camera. It realizes a type of ubiquitous information service using smart phones with cameras. This method includes two main advantages: automatic concatenation of sequential shots and automatic error correction by re-shooting. The automatic concatenation enables a user to take segmented images of a character string, thus a low-resolution camera can be used as the interface device. The automatic error correction enables the user to correct misrecognized characters just by retaking images around them, providing an easy and natural way of error correction. We present two experimental results to prove effectiveness of our method. Both results indicate that our proposed method is helpful.