[comp.cog-eng] Need info on handwriting recognition

garye@hpdsla.HP.COM (Gary Ericson) (12/02/88)

Can someone give me references and/or a summary of what the state-of-the-art
is in handwriting recognition?  I have seen a few informal references in the 
past, but they are (I'm sure) outdated now.  I'm looking into how far 
research has come in the last couple years and where it is today.

I'm interested in both "trained" systems (system is trained to recognize a 
specific person's handwriting) and general systems (intended to be able to
read anyone's handwriting without training).  I'm mostly interested in 
software that will run on a small system like a 286/386 PC (MS-DOS) or a small
workstation (UN*X), but I'd like to know the state-of-the-art in bigger
engines as well.  And I'm interested in systems that will do the character 
interpretation either in real-time or offline.  I'm wondering:

	1) What are typically accepted success rates (e.g., recognizes 
  	   characters correctly 90% of the time)?
	2) [For trained systems] What are typically accepted numbers
	   for how many times a character has to be repeated to train
	   the system?
	3) What kind of media is generally used to enter handwriting
	   (e.g., digitizer for real-time or scanner for non-real-time)?
	4) Any systems designed to recognize "longhand" or "cursive" 
	   writing (I assume most are designed for printed characters)?
	5) Any references (recent) to theory and practice, including 
	   discussing things like what you do when you can't recognize 
	   a specific character?
	6) What systems are commercially (or free/shareware) available?
	7) Has the business world started using any handwriting 
	   recognition in real live applications?

If anyone has any info or pointers, I'd appreciate it.  Thanks.

Gary Ericson - Hewlett-Packard
               phone: (408)746-5098  email: gary@hpdsla9.hp.com
	       mailstop: 101N, 1266 Kifer Rd., Sunnyvale, CA 94086

rapaport@sunybcs.uucp (William J. Rapaport) (12/13/88)

In article <2690001@hpdsla.HP.COM> garye@hpdsla.HP.COM (Gary Ericson) writes:
>Can someone give me references and/or a summary of what the state-of-the-art
>is in handwriting recognition?  

Try:

S.N. Srihari and R. Bozinovic, "A multi-level perception approach
to reading cursive script," Artificial Intelligence, 33, no. 2,
October, 1987.