Documents through cameras

Capturing images of paper documents is a common aspect of office work. It is argued that present scanning interfaces are notoriously inconvenient, usually requiring the user to move the document from the place of reading. This disruption deters the act of 'casual' scanning. In this paper we describe recent progress towards an over-the-desk video-scanning device that permits the user to scan as he or she reads. We present solutions to the problems of calibrating a projected interface and generating images of sufficient quality for successful subsequent document image decoding operations. We provide an illustration of how an over-the-desk camera can be combined with a text selection interface to enhance the convenience of this type of scanning.