Handwriting recognition research: Twenty years of achievement... and beyond

This panel discussion was a follow-up to the first edition of the ICFHR series, which was promoted as an international conference after 10 intensive and productive editions of the International Workshop on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition initiated in 1990 in Montreal. It is essential, however, to recall that research on handwritten character recognition began some 40 years ago, and was expanded about 20 years ago to the more general notion of handwriting recognition (no longer constrained to isolated characters) that we work with today. The organizers of ICFHR 2008 wanted to take the opportunity to organize the panel discussion, chaired by M. Cheriet, to highlight progress in the field over the long course of its development. Panelists M. El Yacoubi, H. Fujisawa, D. Lopresti, and G. Lorette talked about the achievements of two decades of handwriting recognition and about its future. Following these outstanding presentations, conference attendees had the opportunity to air their questions and concerns during open and fruitful exchanges. Each section of this summary is drawn from the original presentation of a panelist. In Section 1, Dr. Hiromichi Fujisawa of Hitachi (Japan) discusses the impact of handwriting recognition technologies on the industrial sector. In Section 2, Dr. Mounim A. El Yacoubi of Institut Telecom, T&M SudParis (France) discusses the need to restructure the efforts of the handwriting recognition community. In Section 3, Dr. Guy Lorette of IRISA—Université de Rennes (France) highlights the recent achievements in handwriting recognition and others on the horizon. In Section 4, Dr. Daniel Lopresti of Lehigh University (USA) discusses the future of handwriting recognition research as a “Grand Challenge” problem. Section 5 concludes this summary by highlighting the salient points that will drive research on handwriting recognition in the future.