Open Mind handwriting project

[David G. Stork]

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                     [[Distribute freely]]

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***  Request for assistance with Open Mind Handwriting Recognition  ***
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Led by Dr. Lambert Schomaker of the UNIPEN Foundation (www.UNIPEN.org),
the Open Mind Handwriting Recognition project seeks to collect data and
develop recognizers of a variety of handwriting data, such as digits,
isolated letters, and words in a variety of western languages (primarily
English).  Handwriting Recognition requires large sets of training data
(as do other Open Mind projects) and our hypothesis is that such data can
be contributed by non-expert netizens over the web.  You can read
background material at:  

           www.OpenMind.org/OpenMindICDAR.pdf
and
           www.OpenMind.org/OpenMindICDAR.typeset.pdf

In a character-based approach, images of unknown recorded isolated
character patterns are presented on a netizen's browser.  The netizen
then submits to the Open Mind host his or her classification of the
character by clicking the corresponding button on a simple interface. 
For the case of words (having a known ASCII string representation but an
unknown location of the letters in the image), the interface is a bit
more complex but the general idea remains the same:  humans are quite
good at pointing out the individual characters in a word.  

While a small-scale web-based labeling system has been written, there is
much software engineering to be done before it is "ready for prime time."
Several Linux example programs for labeling are available to serve as
an inspiration for developing the browser version for netizens.  Issues of
browser independence, speed, load optimizing, robustness, algorithms for
ensuring data reliability, and the balancing of client/server computation
must be addressed before the project is ready for load testing and public
deployment.

We are seeking software engineers to contribute gratis to this effort. 
Practical experience with Web-based user interfaces, Java, Javascript, CGI
programming and Linux (C language) will be required.  A pragmatic view,
combined with sensitivity to user issues, would be ideal.  A knowledge of
pattern recognition research, while desirable, is not needed.

If you feel you would like to contribute, please send a short e-mail
describing your relevant background to me (not Dr. Schomaker directly).
Of course, if you have particular questions, please don't hesitate to
contact me.  In either case, please write "Open Mind Handwriting" in your
header.

Many thanks in advance.


--David Stork
  stork at OpenMind.org

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