IMPLEMENTATION OF HANDWRITING RECOGNITION FOR ETHIOPIC CHARACTERS: Handwriting Recognition System for a PDA device

Handwriting recognition systems are useful and convenient for hand-held devices such as PDA. Even if PDA devices are equipped with handwriting recognition system designed for Latin character set, it is important to localize them to work for Ethiopic character set as well in order to get the most out of them. This project work performs the implementation of online handwriting recognition system for Ethiopic character set. Initially the user has to train the system as it is a writer- dependent system. It is also stroke number and order dependent that the user is obliged to provide his/her handwriting style during the training phase. Missing to match the correct number of strokes will give wrong character recognition. Hence, the user has to be careful in training the system by providing the correct number of strokes and style of writing that he/she uses. In this work experiments are done on PDA emulator and device. The experimental result shows that accuracy rates of 89.75% and 86.00% are achieved on the emulator and PDA device respectively.