Advances in Character Recognition

This book presents advances in character recognition, and it consists of 12 chapters that cover wide range of topics on different aspects of character recognition. Hopefully, this book will serve as a reference source for academic research, for professionals working in the character recognition field and for all interested in the subject

Character Recognition

Character recognition is one of the pattern recognition technologies that are most widely used in practical applications. This book presents recent advances that are relevant to character recognition, from technical topics such as image processing, feature extraction or classification, to new applications including human-computer interfaces. The goal of this book is to provide a reference source for academic research and for professionals working in the character recognition field

Graphomotoric coding in recognizing Chinese Characters

Also available in print.A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), University of Hong Kong, April, 30 1992.Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 1992published_or_final_versionSpeech and Hearing SciencesBachelorBachelor of Science in Speech and Hearing Science

The Effects of Pitch Singing Training on Recognizing and Enunciating Chinese Tones

It is a challenge for non-tonal language speakers to enunciate the four Chinese tones accurately. In the present study, I examined whether musical training benefits tonal language learning, evaluated whether the pitch singing training influence recognizing and enunciating the four Chinese tones, and compared the effects of a pitch singing training method with the traditional audio-lingual method. The participants, 60 American college students who had not taken a Chinese course and who did not speak and write Chinese, were recruited in this study. The participants were divided evenly and randomly into two groups: the pitch singing training group and the traditional audio-lingual training group. They participated in a pretest/training/posttest program over the course of eight training sessions. Results revealed the pitch singing training method had a greater effect on both recognizing and enunciating the four Chinese tones than did the traditional audio-lingual method. The pitch singing training method can be used as an alternative and effective way to improve non-tonal language speakers’ recognition and enunciation of the four Chinese tones, because it provides a sensory experience to the learners, builds associations to the concept of abstract Chinese tones, and elaborates on learners’ memory of the Chinese tones to store it for a long-term retention

Natural Hand Gestures Recognition System for Intelligent HCI: A Survey

Abstract: Gesture recognition is to recognizing meaningful expressions of motion by a human, involving the hands, arms, face, head, and/or body. Hand Gestures have greater importance in designing an intelligent and efficient human-computer interface. The applications of gesture recognition are manifold, ranging from sign language through medical rehabilitation to virtual reality. In this paper a survey on various recent gesture recognition approaches is provided with particular emphasis on hand gestures. A review of static hand posture methods are explained with different tools and algorithms applied on gesture recognition system, including connectionist models, hidden Markov model, and fuzzy clustering. Challenges and future research directions are also highlighted

A Novel Design of Audio CAPTCHA for Visually Impaired Users

CAPTCHAs are widely used by web applications for the purpose of security and privacy. However, traditional text-based CAPTCHAs are not suitable for sighted users much less users with visual impairments. To address the issue, this paper proposes a new mechanism for CAPTCHA called HearAct, which is a real-time audio-based CAPTCHA that enables easy access for users with visual impairments. The user listens to the sound of something (the “sound-maker”), and he/she must identify what the sound-maker is. After that, HearAct identifies a word and requires the user to analyze a word and determine whether it has the stated letter or not. If the word has the letter, the user must tap and if not, they swipe. This paper presents our HearAct pilot study conducted with thirteen blind users. The preliminary user study results suggest the new form of CAPTCHA has a lot of potential for both blind and visual users. The results also show that the HearAct CAPTCHA can be solved in a shorter time than the text-based CAPTCHAs because HearAct allows users to solve the CAPTCHA using gestures instead of typing. Thus, participants preferred HearAct over audio-based CAPTCHAs. The results of the study also show that the success rate of solving the HearAct CAPTCHA is 82.05% and 43.58% for audio CAPTCHA. A significant usability differences between the System Usability score for HearAct CAPTCHA method was 88.07 compared to audio CAPTCHA was 52.11%. Using gestures to solve the CAPTCHA challenge is the most preferable feature in the HearAct solution. To increase the security of HearAct, it is necessary to increase the number of sounds in the CAPTCHA. There is also a need to improve the CAPTCHA solution to cover wide range of users by adding corresponding image with each sound to meet deaf users’ needs; they then need to identify the spelling of the sound maker’s word

Maggie: A Social Robot as a Gaming Platform

Edutainment robots are robots designed to participate in people's education and in their entertainment. One of the tasks of edutainment robots is to play with their human partners, but most of them offer a limited pool of games. Moreover, it is difficult to add new games to them. This lack of flexibility could shorten their life cycle. This paper presents a social robot on which several robotic games have been developed. Our robot uses a flexible and modular architecture that allows the creation of new skills by the composition of existing and simpler skills. With this architecture, the development of a new game mainly consists in the composition of the skills that are needed for this specific game. In this paper, we present the robot, its hardware and its software architecture, including its interaction capabilities. We also provide a detailed description of the development of five of the games the robot can play.The authors gratefully acknowledge the funds provided by the Spanish MICINN (Ministry of Science and Innovation) through the project "A new Approach to Social Robotics (AROS)". The research leading to these results has also received funding from the RoboCity2030-II-CM project(S2009/DPI-1559), funded by Programas de Actividades I+D en la Comunidad de Madrid and cofunded by Structural Funds ofthe EU