CHARACTER RECOGNITION METHOD UTILIZING COMPASS DIRECTIONS AND TORSION POINTS AS FEATURES

A method of recognizing a character is described which includes the following operations: (a) measuring the angle of the tangent to the character at each of a plurality of sample points on the character, (b) assigning those points having a tangent direction within a first, small predefined angle from the vertical axis with values of Up or Down compass directions, and those points having a tangent direction within the first, small predefined angle from the horizontal axis with values of Left of Right compass directions and (c) selecting special points. The special points are those sample points: i) at the beginning and end of the character; ii) whose compass direction is different than that of the previously selected special point; iii) whose compass direction is the same as the previously selected special point only if: a) there is at least one sample point, among the sample points between the two sample points with the same compass direction, which has no compass direction and b) at least one of the sample points with no compass direction is a "torsion" point defined as a point having a tangent direction which is a significant local extremum among those sample points with no compass direction between the two sample points having the same compass direction; and iv) which are torsion points.