Toward robust handwritten character recognition

Abstract This paper addresses the problem of establishing a robust methodology for handwritten character recognition. First, conventional techniques in Japan are critically surveyed to clarify the state of the art and remaining problems. Second, new and promising approaches are enumerated from the viewpoint of general pattern recognition methodology. Third, a challenge to distortion-tolerant shape matching using the idea of local affine transformation is described. Finally, interesting research topics relevant to mailing address recognition are discussed.