Microsoft, Motorola, Siemens, Hitachi, IAPR, NICI, IUF
The socalled multiple hypothesis technique is applied to solve a recognition problem that can be divided into at least two subproblems. The principle of the technique is to solve the subproblems by recognisers, a prerecogniser and a postrecogniser, and to allow the prerecogniser to leave several possible solutions to the postrecogniser. The prerecogniser uses several hypotheses based on information or a priori knowledge. The postrecogniser tries to solve its assigned subproblem by using the solutions from the prerecogniser and different a priori knowledge. Therefore, there must be cooperation between the recognisers in order to achieve better total performance in solving the recognition problem. In this study, required abilities of the pre and the postrecognisers are analysed in order to attain better recognition performance. This analysis gives guidelines for two special factors: number of outputs of the prerecogniser and required recognition rate of each recogniser. These guidelines are applied to an actual mailaddress reading system using a multiple hypothesis technique