The present invention relates to a system for filling in documents using an electronic pen, an electronic pen and electronically processing paper for use in the system.
In government and public offices, municipal offices, companies or corporations, etc., for the purpose of facilitating document management or inquiry or the like, conversion of documents such as written applications or circular documents to electronically processible forms has been advanced in these years. In this connection, a technique for immediately converting information manually filled in such document into electronic data includes, for example, an electronic pen and electronic processing paper implemented by a technique described in WO01/48590A1.
First, the electronic processing paper means a document having the format of the document printed on a paper sheet having a special dot pattern formed thereon. The dot pattern is made of dots uniquely arranged so that, when the paper sheet is divided into grids having a predetermined size and viewed, the position of a grid on the whole paper sheet can be specified. That is, the dot pattern corresponds to an allocated part of the whole dot pattern formed on a massive area. Second, the electronic pen includes a pen device capable of visually recognizing a character or the like filled in a sheet of paper by fixing ink onto the paper sheet, a camera for reading out a dot pattern on the paper sheet, a piezoelectric element for detecting a pressure applied to the pen device, an image processing device for generating positional information of coordinate data about the locus of a character, etc., a memory for temporarily storing the positional information therein, and a wireless transmission device for transmitting the positional information to another device.
When a user fills in a document as an electronic processing paper with necessary matters using the electronic pen device, each time the piezoelectric element detects the pen pressure, the electronic pen device generates information on a position at the tip of the pen device on the basis of dots read out by the camera. The generated positional information is stored in the memory and, after the user finishes document filling, the stored positional information is transmitted from the wireless transmission device. The transmitted data is processed and subjected to character recognition as necessary in an analysis processing device for linking the positional information to the format of the document, thereby converting the data into an electronic document.
However, when the document is required to be sequentially filled in by a plurality of users, it is impossible to confirm specific one of the users who filled in a specific column. It is also difficult to confirm the filling or entry sequence of the plurality of users. To avoid this, it is considered to attach an explanation paper instructing the users about their filling or entry authority and entry sequence to the document. However, this is not preferable because it involves an increased number of documents.