METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR MACHINE RECOGNITION OF HANDWRITTEN SYMBOLS FROM STROKE-PARAMETER DATA

A method is described for the automatic recognition of at least one handwritten symbol. A representation of such symbol is provided, in a data storage medium, as a sequence of one or more discrete strokes having respective initial and final endpoints, a spatial location and a tangent angle being associated with each endpoint. Representations of plural library symbols, each a prototype of a possible class to which the input symbol may be assigned, are retrieved from a data storage medium. A comparison between the input-symbol representation and each of the retrieved library symbol representations includes comparing the respective tangent angles of the input symbol with the corresponding tangent angles of at least some of the library symbols, and comparing the respective endpoint locations of the input symbol with the corresponding endpoint locations of at least some of the library symbols.