Camera-based Digit Recognition System

Optical character recognition systems are used extensively for document acquisition. This paper describes the architecture and implementation of a camera-based digit recognition system to be used by an automated meter-reading device (AMR). This application has very specific requirements that can let to an optimized application specific hardware design. In the presented architecture the meter image is acquired by a CMOS image sensor and processed and recognized by an FPGA in real time. The proposed method for digit recognition is based on an original application of sequence alignment algorithms. The system is prototyped in a low cost FPGA.