NPen/sup ++/: a writer independent, large vocabulary on-line cursive handwriting recognition system

Abstract

In this paper we describe the NPen/sup ++/ system for writer independent on-line handwriting recognition. This recognizer needs no training for a particular writer and can recognize any common writing style (cursive, hand-printed, or a mixture of both). The neural network architecture, which was originally proposed for continuous speech recognition tasks, and the preprocessing techniques of NPen/sup ++/ are designed to make heavy use of the dynamic writing information, i.e. the temporal sequence of data points recorded on an LCD tablet or digitizer. We present results for the writer independent recognition of isolated words. Tested on different dictionary sizes from 1,000 up to 100,000 words, recognition rates range from 98.0% for the 1,000 word dictionary to 91.4% on a 20,000 word dictionary and 82.9% for the 100,000 word dictionary. No language models are used to achieve these results.