Handwritten character verification method and apparatus therefor

Abstract

A handwritten character recognition method including the steps of acquiring coordinate information and writing pressure information relating to a handwritten character string as three-dimensional time series information, correcting the handwritten character string data through use of a warping function in order to minimize the overall degree of difference among a plurality of sets of handwritten character string data, and comparing the thus-corrected character string data with registered handwritten character string data by dynamic programming matching so as to obtain the overall degree of difference between the handwritten character string data and the corrected handwritten character string data. The method further includes the steps of extracting strokes from the character string, acquiring coordinate information and writing pressure information with regard to each of the strokes corresponding to the character string to be checked, and summing cumulative errors between corresponding paired strokes of the character strings to be compared in terms of coordinate information and writing pressure information, to thereby calculate from the cumulative values the overall degree of difference between the handwritten character string data and registered handwritten character string data. Further, the degree of difference in fluctuation of writing movement is calculated from cumulative values of the fluctuation speed of writing movement through use of time axis warping functions. These degrees of difference are added to discriminant elements.