Abstract :
After comment on the obvious disparity between the print quality accepted as normal for human reading and the much higher quality needed for machine reading, a system is proposed and results of a simulation study presented for reducing this gap. The system employs a modified form of auto-correlation to extract characteristic properties from which specimen unknown characters can be identified by a simple recognition logic. In order to avoid the problem of representing the continuous grey-tone density scale of low quality print as a two state (binary) variable, analogue techniques are proposed for use in the system. Using a computer simulation of the proposed system a limited number of printed samples of exaggerated quality distribution are used to explore the limits of performance of the system. Numerical results are given and factors effecting performance discussed.