Breakthrough in Chinese Handwriting Recognition Announced by Motorola’s Lexicus Division at COMDEX
LAS VEGAS — November 13, 1995 — An international team of young Palo Alto-based scientists has developed an algorithm which will make life easier for Chinese PC users.
Motorola, Lexicus Division (NYSE:MOT) announced today the development of the world's first highly accurate Chinese character recognizer. With no training, Chinese writers can now input the 13,000 Chinese characters into Windows 95 applications on standard desktop and notebook computers.
This technology will be demonstrated at COMDEX/Fall '95 in Las Vegas (Booth No. L846/L1046), Nov. 13-17. Evaluation copies will be available to PC manufacturers in December.
Background
There are over one billion writers of Chinese characters in the world. Regardless of the dialect of Chinese they speak (Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, etc.), they write one of two character sets: Traditional or Simplified.
Traditional is the superset of characters which is used in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Simplified, which was developed in the PRC, combines traditional characters and some simplified versions of characters. Japanese "kanji" characters have considerable overlap with traditional and to a lesser extent simplified Chinese characters.
Technical Challenge
Chinese characters are written with a series of strokes — as few as one to more than 17. Children learn a set stroke sequence for each character, but there are variations in adults' stroke order. The concept of "cursive" writing in Chinese characters exists, but in a different form than in English and other roman character languages, where letters within a word run together.
"In cursive Chinese, the strokes within a character run together, which can make recognition of real writing very difficult," said Dr. Chao Fen Sun of Stanford University.
Market Need
Unlike in the United States, where personal computers and keyboard proficiency abound, in China and other Chinese-speaking countries, the per capita installed base of PCs is small. One barrier to wide adoption of desktop PCs is the difficulty of entering Chinese characters into a computer.
The large number of commonly-used characters in Chinese makes it nearly impossible to build a Chinese character keyboard.
Product Differentiation
"This technology will revolutionize the use of personal computers and microprocessors in Asia. Users no longer need to learn the English keyboard to enter Chinese characters into PCs, PDAs and notebook computers," said Elton Sherwin, vice president of marketing, Lexicus Division.
Motorola's Lexicus Division has developed the world's first highly accurate walk-up-&-use Chinese character recognizer. The Lexicus recognizer presents a major technological breakthrough: over 95 percent accuracy in real usage situations.
Continuing in the Lexicus tradition, this new technology recognizes "cursive" style characters, thereby allowing for faster and more natural handwriting.
The recognizer has two dictionaries, which together contain the whole Chinese character set (over 13,000 characters). It runs on 486-class machines, and the user interface is designed for optimized throughput. It works on a complex writing model computed for each character; the model is applied using advanced pattern recognition technologies.
Tradition of Innovation
"By the turn of the century, this technology may run on the surface of a watch crystal," said John Seybold, PhD., vice president of Asia-Pacific, Lexicus Division.
Founded in 1992, Lexicus was acquired by Motorola Inc. in 1993 and is now part of Motorola's Messaging Information and Media Sector. Since joining Motorola, Lexicus Division has released the following:
— Lexicus Longhand(TM), Dec. 1994.
English cursive handwriting recognition software for Developers.
— Professor Longhand(TM), Dec. 1994.
Handwriting tutor which grades students' cursive penmanship.
— CableWrite(TM), May 1995.
A quiz game demonstrating the use of cursive handwriting on interactive television.
— Lexicus QuickPrint(TM), Aug. 1995.
Handwriting recognition software for Magic Cap(TM) communicators, including Envoy(R) Wireless Communicator from Motorola.
— Lexicus QuickPrint(TM) on Dragonball(TM), Sept. 1995.
Handwriting recognition for M68328 "Dragonball", a low-power microprocessor for small portable systems.
— Lexicus LexiQuiz(TM) at EPCOT Center, Sept. 1995.
The world's first walk-up-&-use kiosk to accept cursive handwriting. Featured at Motorola's Innoventions Exhibit at Disney's EPCOT Center.
— Lexicus Longhand Professional, Nov. 1995.
Cursive note-taking in Windows applications such as Microsoft Word(TM) and PowerPoint(TM).
CONTACT:
Motorola, Lexicus Division
Wako Takayama, 415/462-6801
email: [email protected]
or
Switzer Communications
Dawn Montoya, 415/945-7073
email: [email protected]
or
Ralph Silver Associates
Ralph Silver, 415/563-4159