Patent ID: 6520407
Filing Date: 2003-02-18
Classification: B07C,G06K

Abstract:
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.