^^ Your description is not completely accurate. A technical paper is usually post research activity that involves presentation of your research on a topic and ultimately ending with your own conclusion on it.You can reference previous research on the topic, but ultimately it is your own analysis and conclusion that matter. It is more than just picking up a topic, searching for information on the net and giving an overview of it by copy pasting stuff from different sources and even pasting some one else's conclusion as students of many educational institutions are getting used to.
Research proposal is a completely different thing. It is a Pre-research activity. It is a proposal of what you intend to do as part of that research.
Just to show the difference between the two, lets say that I did some research on Face recognition and did an analysis of various existing approaches, I can then present a paper detailing the approaches taken up various authors, compare the same, give my opinion of why I think some approach is better than the other etc. Lets say I also came up with a new/hybrid approach of my own as a result of the research, I can also put that in the paper as well, I can document my results and say why I think my approach is better than the previous approaches. Finally I can give a conclusion. Now that would be a technical paper.
On the other hand, let's say I want to to do some research on utility of Neural Networks in Face Recognition as for perusal of a PhD or say I want budget form the college/govt for my research. I haven't done any deep research on the topic yet. So I give a research proposal on what I intend to do as part of the research and if its its for a budget approval or something, I can also say what would be outcome of the research and how it would be helpful and also detail what I would need to successfully take the research to frutition.
