Online Handwriting Recognition Technology and Its Applications

This paper describes Fujitsu’s online handwritten character recognition (OLCR) technology and some application software that adopts this technology. Fujitsu’s Japanese OLCR has the highest level of performance among Japanese OLCRs and is based on two of our unique character recognition technologies: hybrid character recognition and bigram-based context processing. To realize more effective and practical handwriting interfaces, we have developed additional OLCR techniques such as hybrid adaptation, predictive handwriting recognition, and box-free handwritten string recognition. Several software products, including Japanist 2003 and Japanist for Pocket PC, have adopted this technology. This technology is also used by the standard handwriting recognition engine in FMV-STYLISTIC, which is one of Fujitsu’s Tablet PCs. In one experiment, our OLCR technology achieved a 94.6% recognition accuracy for Japanese text compared to other software available on the market, which achieved an accuracy of only 82 to 88%.