Chinese character recognition algorithms for intelligent transport systems

Automatic recognition of Chinese character signs in real time could ultimately form an important part of street navigation in an intelligent transport system. In this paper the structure of Chinese characters is reviewed and seen to consist of a 3-layer hierarchy of character, radical and stroke. Fuzzy possibilistic reasoning is put forward as an appropriate set of algorithmic tools to aid automatic recognition of these characters. Associative memory artificial neural network algorithms form a suitable technique for realising these concepts. Implementing these techniques several issues are explored: vagueness of radicals, their situation, position invariance, extraction order and shape. Extensive results are obtained to demonstrate the quality of the algorithms in dealing with the range of difficulties inherent in the problem.