By Karl Guttag
Making copies is on the brink of change. That change will be so dramatic that, within a few years, the office copier will evolve into an intelligent document management station that will handle clipping, filing, routing and recalling of the hundreds of documents most of us deal with every week. In the process, it will eliminate the need for tons of paper and save millions of trees.
A powerful Digital Signal Processor (DSP) Solution from Texas Instruments provides the engine for this impending change. TI's TMS320C8X family of integrated DSPs, offers the processing power to develop digital image processing systems.
Digital processing on high-end, high-volume (mainframe-class) copiers and color copiers already is in full swing. In general, though, these copiers are just that--copiers. They use advanced technology to perform the same old tasks. They don't really change the way we work or cut down on the paper we generate.
Just as today's PC has virtually eliminated both the typewriter and word processor, document image processing workstations will revolutionize the workplace virtually eliminating the copier as we know it. High performance DSPs, such as the 'C8x family, hold the keys to this revolution.
DSPs, of course, are microprocessors specially designed to accept real-world data-such as audio signals or the pixels/dots that make up document images-and process that data digitally. But the need for huge amounts of processing, data movement and memory storage in processing the millions of pixels making up a document image overtaxes most existing DSPs.
The TMS320C8x family was developed to address the special demands of image processing. The 'C8x integrates multiple parallel DSPs and a RISC CPU onto a single chip to meet the larger processing demand. Each of the DSPs handles parts of the processing, while the RISC CPU manages system communication and general purpose processing tasks. Together, these components provide the horsepower for true document management systems.
Early attempts at integrating a copier printer and a fax machine have produced products that are not good at copying. Plus they lack the image processing necessary for a revolutionary improvement in document management. Going beyond simply digitizing and replicating, the image processor will analyze the original to correct for irregularities such as rotation. In faxing, it will eliminate most of the "jaggys" commonly associated with faxed material today.
Do you need a few pages from a thick book? Image processing will straighten out the curves of type you now see near the spine. Did you spill coffee on an important contract? With digital image processing, you can eliminate the stains and create a clean document identical to the original.
Image processing workstations also will apply different image processing algorithms to high contrast text and continuous tone pictures. As a result, you will see a page that precisely replicates the original. Instead of blotchy boxes where the pictures should be, you'll see half-tone or color images.
The biggest revolution will come from the machine's ability to read documents and help manage information. Drawing on your personal profile, an imaging workstation will scan magazines and other documents, selecting the information you are likely to want and sending it, in compressed form, to your PC. If you want to keep the text and discard the pictures, the copier will clip an article for you in a highly compressed form.
Today, many of us use the big pile filing method. Paper builds up in our offices because we don't know what to do with it. How can we file it so that we'll remember where it is the next time we need it? In the future, we will retrieve documents by searching for key words or specific content, rather than by trying to figure out which file folder may contain what we want.
No matter what new applications innovative equipment designers dream up, you can be sure that, by the turn of the century, document management in the typical office will be very different from what we know today. TMS320C8X-based digital copier/document management stations will play a big part in the revolution.
Liquid Paper is a registered trademark of the Gillette Company.
September 1995, vol. 12, no. 6