HARDWARE IMPLEMENTATION OF OPTICAL CHARACTER RECOGNITION USING ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS

WE PROPOSE TO DEMONSTRATE THE FEASIBILITY OF OPTICAL CHARACTER RECOGNITION (OCR) ON A VLSI NEUROCOMPUTER. THE OCR SYSTEM WILL USE STATE OF THE ART ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORK CLASSIFIERS ONADAPTIVE SOLUTIONS' CNAPS NEUROCOMPUTER CHIPS. THE CNAPS CHIPS OFFERUNPRECEDENTED PERFORMANCE OF ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS. THE IMAGE PREPROCESSING OF THE OCR SYSTEM WILL ALSO EXECUTE ON THE CNAPS CHIPS. THE GOAL OF THE PHASE I RESEARCH IS TO IMPLEMENT THE OCR SOFTWARE ON ACNAPS DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM, ANALYZE I/O AND SYSTEM PERFORMANCE, AND CREATE A BOARD LEVEL ARCHITECTURE FOR AN OCR SYSTEM. THE GOAL OF THE PHASE II RESEARCH IS TO DESIGN AND BUILD THE OCR SYSTEM HARDWARE. ANTICIPATED BENEFITS/POTENTIAL COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS - OPTICAL CHARACTER RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY IS USEFUL TO THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE FOR THE COMPUTER AIDED LOGISTICS PROGRAM, ELECTRONIC BACKUP OF EXISTING DOCUMENTS, AND FORMS PROCESSING.