# The Universal Scan Pipeline: Five Inputs, One System
Every piece of paper in your life should be searchable. The problem isn't scanning — it's that scanning has always been tied to one device, one workflow, one moment. AskRobots solves this with a universal scan pipeline that accepts documents from any source and processes them through the same automated system.
## Five Input Devices, One Endpoint
### 1. Phone Camera (Mobile)
**Best for:** Receipts, business cards, whiteboards, anything on the go
You're at the store, you get a receipt. Snap it with the AskRobots app before it fades. At a networking event, photograph a business card. After a meeting, capture the whiteboard. Your phone is always with you — that's its superpower.
The pipeline handles the messy reality of phone photos: rotation correction, background removal, contrast enhancement for crumpled thermal paper under fluorescent lights.
### 2. Flatbed Scanner
**Best for:** Contracts, legal documents, certificates, high-quality archival
The glass surface produces the cleanest possible scan. No skew, no shadows, consistent lighting edge to edge. For documents that matter — signed contracts, tax forms, certificates — the flatbed gives you archival quality.
Place the document, close the cover, click scan. The image arrives already flat and square. Minimal preprocessing needed — just OCR and you're done.
### 3. Sheet-Fed Scanner (Duplex)
**Best for:** Catching up on a pile, batch processing, going paperless
Stack 50 pages in the feeder and walk away. Both sides scanned automatically. This is how you go from a filing cabinet to a searchable digital archive in an afternoon.
Perfect for: old tax records, medical paperwork, insurance documents, that drawer of papers you've been meaning to organize for three years.
### 4. Overhead Document Camera
**Best for:** Bound books, fragile documents, thick items
Some things can't go through a sheet feeder or lay flat on glass — bound notebooks, old books, passports, items with raised seals. An overhead camera captures them without bending or damage.
Also surprisingly fast for one-off scans: place paper down, click, done. No lid to open, no feeder to load. Just point and capture.
### 5. Desktop App (Quick Capture)
**Best for:** Screenshots, digital documents, drag-and-drop workflow
Not everything starts on paper. Drag a PDF from your email into the app. Screenshot an invoice from a website. Import photos from your camera roll. The desktop app is the bridge between digital documents and the scan pipeline.
## One Pipeline Processes Everything
Regardless of the source, every scan flows through the same system:
```
Input Device → Upload → AskRobots API → Scan Pipeline → Searchable Document
```
**The pipeline steps:**
1. **Ingest** — Save the raw image, record the source device and metadata
2. **Preprocessing** — Rotate, crop, deskew, enhance (tuned per source type)
3. **OCR** — Extract text using the best engine for the document type
4. **Classification** — Auto-categorize: receipt, invoice, contract, medical, tax
5. **Storage** — Searchable text, clean thumbnail, organized by category
**Smart preprocessing per source:**
| Source | Preprocessing Needed |
|--------|---------------------|
| Phone | Rotation, background crop, perspective correction, contrast boost |
| Flatbed | Minimal — just trim edges |
| Sheet-fed | Deskew, blank page removal |
| Overhead cam | Perspective correction, shadow removal |
| Desktop/digital | Format conversion if needed |
## What This Enables
Once every document is scanned and searchable, the tedious stuff becomes instant:
- **Expense reports** — Search "Target" or "March receipts" instead of digging through a shoebox
- **Tax prep** — Filter by category "tax/deductions" and export everything your accountant needs
- **Insurance claims** — Find that medical bill from six months ago in seconds
- **Contract lookup** — Search for "non-compete" across every document you've ever signed
- **Receipt returns** — Pull up the receipt for that thing you need to return, no paper required
## The End of Filing Cabinets
The old way: receive paper → decide where to file it → put it in a folder → hope you remember which folder when you need it later.
The new way: receive paper → scan it with whatever device is closest → the system categorizes it, extracts the text, makes it searchable → find it instantly whenever you need it.
No filing. No folders. No organizing. Just scan and search.
## Getting Started
You don't need all five input devices on day one. Start with your phone — it's already in your pocket. Scan receipts for a week. Watch them auto-categorize and become searchable.
Then add a flatbed for the important stuff. A sheet-fed scanner when you're ready to tackle the filing cabinet. An overhead camera for books and bound documents.
The pipeline is the same regardless. Every new input device just means more paper enters the system faster.
---
*AskRobots processes scans through an automated pipeline: image cleanup, OCR text extraction, AI categorization, and full-text search. Upload from any device — phone, scanner, camera, or desktop — and every document becomes instantly findable.*