Motorola, Lexicus Division Licenses Chinese Handwriting Recognition
PALO ALTO, Calif. — August 1, 1996 — Motorola, Lexicus Division (NYSE:MOT) announced today their agreement to license its award-winning Windows 95 Chinese handwriting recognition technology to YTG.
YTG is a leading Taiwanese manufacturer of digitizing tablets and Chinese handwriting recognition software. Motorola's technology will be integrated into YTG's premium product, the SmartPad Professional. James Jeng, President of YTG said, "My technical team evaluated numerous Chinese handwriting recognition technologies and Motorola's was the most accurate for native Chinese writers. This is the first technology that accurately recognizes cursive Chinese handwriting."
Lexicus Vice-President, Elton Sherwin said, "YTG's tablets and Motorola's recognition algorithms will revolutionize the way Chinese writers interact with computers."
THE TECHNOLOGY
The Motorola technology to be used in YTG's SmartPad Professional is a highly accurate walk-up-and-use Chinese handwriting recognizer. Running under Windows 95, the recognizer has 4 dictionaries, which together contain over 20,000 Traditional and Simplified characters. It works on a complex writing model computed for each character; this model is applied using advanced pattern recognition technologies.
YTG's SmartPad Professional Version will be demonstrated at Taipei Computer Application Show in Booth A222 at the World Trade Center in Taipei, Taiwan, August 8 through August 12, 1996.
HOW IT WORKS
YTG's tablet uses electromagnetic technology to sense the position of the pen on the writing surface. The tablet then generates in time sequence the x,y coordinates and passes them through the serial port to Motorola's recognition software. The recognizer then converts the x,y coordinates to strokes, analyzes the stroke sequence and matches this "electronic ink" to one of the 4 user-selectable dictionaries. The system uses a sophisticated AI-like form of contextual analysis to interpret poorly written or ambiguous characters. Finally, the output can be displayed in either Traditional or Simplified characters. This enables the user to write in Traditional Chinese (used in Taiwan and Hong Kong) and create documents or faxes in Simplified Chinese (used in the People's Republic of China).
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 adult's 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. Chinese writers often write characters with connected strokes within the character.
YTG
Since its inception, YTG Smartech Technology Inc. has been a firm totally committed to the manufacture and export of digitizers that meet internationally recognized standards of excellence and satisfy the needs of Chinese writers, graphic artists and CAD/CAM professionals around the globe.
MOTOROLA, LEXICUS DIVISION
Motorola, Lexicus Division is one of the world's leading providers of handwriting and speech recognition software for desktop, mobile and embedded systems. Its products include cursive and print recognizers for English and Chinese, and noise-robust DSP-based speech recognition subsystems. Motorola is one of the world's leading providers of wireless communications, semiconductors, and advanced electronic systems and services. Motorola's 1995 sales were $ 27.0 billion.
Note to Editors: Motorola and the Motorola logo are registered trademarks and WisdomPen is a trademark of Motorola, Inc. SmartPad is a trademark of Smartech Technology, Inc. All other company and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.
CONTACT:
Motorola
Brenda Scariot, 415/833-8062 (English)
email: [email protected]
Sheree Wu, 415/833-8082 (Mandarin)
or
YTG
Nancy Tseng, fax: 886-2-8090155
email: [email protected]