Motorola Ships Advanced Chinese Handwriting Recognition Technology
BEIJING, China — February 19, 1997 — Motorola, Lexicus Division (NYSE:MOT) announced that its award-winning Chinese Handwriting Recognition System will be available throughout the People's Republic of China.
The product, named WisdomPen ("Huibi" in Chinese) system, will be distributed by Beijing Tsinghua Wintone Information Technology Co. and Shenzhen Liming Network Systems Co., Ltd.
Tsinghua Wintone is a leading developer of Chinese Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software and a major distributor of Hewlett Packard scanners. Shenzhen Liming is one of the largest system integrators in Mainland China.
"We are very excited to work with Chinese software companies on this product to extend the market for Chinese computing," said P.Y Lai, Corporate Vice President and President of Motorola (China) Electronic Ltd.
The WisdomPen System
The WisdomPen Chinese Handwriting Recognition System is a highly accurate cursive Chinese handwriting recognizer. The WisdomPen System does not require users to learn a new writing style. Writers can input Chinese characters into a computer in their natural handwriting. Running under Windows 95 or Windows 3.1 the recognizer has 4 dictionaries, which together contain over 20,000 Simplified and Traditional characters.
"This technology will revolutionize the use of personal computers and microprocessors in Asia," said Elton Sherwin, director of Marketing at Lexicus. "Users no longer need to learn the English keyboard to enter Chinese characters into PCs and notebook computers."
How it Works
The WisdomPen System includes a Motorola digitizing tablet and pen. The WisdomPen tablet uses electromagnetic technology to sense the position of the pen on the writing surface. The tablet then generates the x,y coordinates in time sequence and passes them through the serial port to WisdomPen's software.
The WisdomPen software 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 WisdomPen system uses a form of contextual analysis to interpret poorly written characters. Finally, the output is displayed in Chinese (simplified or traditional) fonts that can be used in wordprocessors, faxes, email and other programs.
System Requirements
The WisdomPen System runs under both Windows 95 and Windows 3.1 operating systems. The minimum system requirements for users of Windows 95 are a 486DX4/100 PC (Pentium 75 or above recommended) with 8MB RAM (16 recommended) and 20MB hard drive space. The minimum system requirements for users of Windows 3.1 are a 486DX/33 PC (486DX/66 recommended) with 4MB RAM (8MB recommended) and 10MB hard drive space.
Pricing and Availability
The WisdomPen system will be available in China in March with an estimated retail price of RMB1,680.
Motorola, Lexicus Division
The Lexicus Division of Motorola 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, components, and services.
Major equipment businesses include cellular telephone, two-way radio, paging and data communications, personal communications, automotive, defense and space electronics and computers. Motorola semiconductors power communication devices, computers and millions of other products. Motorola's 1996 sales were $ 28 billion.
Note to Editors: Motorola and the Motorola logo are registered trademarks and WisdomPen is a trademark of Motorola, Inc. All other company and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.
CONTACT:
Motorola (U.S.)
Denise Brosseau, 415/462-6837
[email protected]
www.mot.com/lexicus
or
Motorola (China)
Z.Q. Shr, 8610-6843-7222 ext. 3095
[email protected]
or
Wintone
Dong Chen, 8610-6255-7787
[email protected]
or
Liming
Zhang Xiaoxiong, 8621-6466-6400
[email protected]