What is OCR Character Recognition Technology
The full name of OCR is Optical Character Recognition, which is called Optical Character Recognition in Chinese. It uses optical technology and computer technology to read out the text printed or written on paper and convert it into a format that can be accepted by computer and understood by human.
Application Scenario of OCR Character Recognition Technology
OCR character recognition technology is widely used in the field of bank bills, document input and processing. It is suitable for automatic scanning, identification and long-term storage of a large number of bills and forms in banking, taxation and other industries. In the field of machine vision, OCR also has many applications, such as capturing text images through industrial cameras and industrial lenses, and processing them with machine vision software to obtain the information we need. Common applications include:
1. Data reading on instruments, such as water meters, gas meters and ammeters in residents'lives;
2. Read the date and batch number of the product and obtain the expiration and traceability information of the product.
3. License plate recognition of intelligent transportation to obtain information of illegal vehicles.
OCR Application in Machine Vision
1. Detection of Bar Code/Character Printing Defects and Integrity
2. Detection of Bar Code/Character Errors and Misprints
3. Whether the direction of the object is correct or not
4. Static or dynamic detection
5. OK/NG product system outputs corresponding control signals.
To identify and detect the missing print, right and wrong, defect, presence or absence, offset of the printed surface characters, to determine whether the tested products are qualified, and output the test results and corresponding signals.
Common Application of OCR Character Recognition
Some of the current applications of character recognition are relatively mature: such as Hanwang OCR, Baidu OCR, Ali OCR and so on. In fact, we can also feel that OCR technology is really changing our lives: for example, a mobile app can help scan business cards, identity cards and identify the information inside; cars into parking lots, toll stations do not need manual registration, are using license plate recognition technology; when we read books, we do not understand. Question, take a mobile phone to sweep, APP can help you find the answer to this question on the Internet. This is based on the application of OCR technology.
Development of OCR Technology
In some simple environments, the accuracy of OCR has been relatively high (e.g. electronic documents), but in some complex environments, character recognition, no one dares to say that they can do a good job today. Nowadays, people seldom focus on how to further improve the accuracy of text recognition of electronic documents, because they focus on more challenging areas. The traditional OCR method is not effective in dealing with the text recognition of complex graphics and text scenes. More and more people are focusing on how to read the text in complex scenes, and how to read it accurately as a research topic. In academic terms, it is scene text recognition (text detection + text recognition).
As can be seen from the figure above, text recognition in natural scenes is much more difficult than that in simple scenes. Although many achievements have been made, it is still far from the ideal result.
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