Breakthrough in Chinese handwriting recognition announced by Motorola's Lexicus Division at COMDEX; technology may revolutionize Asian personal computer market.LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 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 NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange :MOT) announced today the development of the world's first highly accurate Chinese character recognizer. With no training, Chinese writers Chronological list Antiquity and Qin Dynasty
This technology will be demonstrated at COMDEX/Fall '95 in Las Vegas Las Vegas (läs vā`gəs), city (1990 pop. 258,295), seat of Clark co., S Nev.; inc. 1911. It is the largest city in Nevada and the center of one of the fastest-growing urban areas in the United States. (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 A group of commands or functions that exceed the capabilities of the original specification. Software or hardware components designed for the original specification will also operate with the superset product. However, components designed for the superset will not work with the original. of characters which is used in Taiwan and Hong Kong Hong Kong (hŏng kŏng), Mandarin Xianggang, special administrative region of China, formerly a British crown colony (2005 est. pop. 6,899,000), land area 422 sq mi (1,092 sq km), adjacent to Guangdong prov. . Simplified, which was developed in the PRC, combines traditional characters and some simplified versions of characters. Japanese "kanji (human language, character) kanji - /kahn'jee/ (From the Japanese "kan" - the Chinese Han dynasty, and "ji" - glyph or letter of the alphabet. Not capitalised. Plural "kanji") The Japanese word for a Han character used in Japanese. " 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 Stanford University, at Stanford, Calif.; coeducational; chartered 1885, opened 1891 as Leland Stanford Junior Univ. (still the legal name). The original campus was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. David Starr Jordan was its first president. . Market Need Unlike in the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. , where personal computers and keyboard proficiency abound, in China and other Chinese-speaking countries, the per capita [Latin, By the heads or polls.] A term used in the Descent and Distribution of the estate of one who dies without a will. It means to share and share alike according to the number of individuals. 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 Product Differentiation A source of competitive advantage that depends on producing some item that is regarded to have unique and valuable characteristics. "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 John Seybold may refer to:
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 Handwriting recognition is the ability of a computer to receive intelligible handwritten input. The image of the written text may be sensed "off line" from a piece of paper by optical scanning (optical character 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 EPCOT Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow (Disney) 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: wakot@lexicus.mot.com or Switzer Communications Dawn Montoya, 415/945-7073 email: dawn@switz.com or Ralph Silver Associates Ralph Silver, 415/563-4159 |
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