About Nakagawa Lab
Nakagawa Laboratory is currently being focused on "Enhancing Handwriting Interfaces" which is aimed to provide creative human computer interfaces by handwriting.
We have been working on Online Handwriting Recognition technology for more than 25 years and possess one of the highest performance systems in Japan. Several companies have been collaborating with us and have incorporated the research results into their products. We have 2 databases of online handwritten character patterns which contain over 3 million patterns. More than 50 companies or institutions are using our databases.
In addition to Online recognition, we have the technology for Offline Character Recognition (which is also a part of Online Recognition System), Pen-based/Touch-based Interfaces and Applications. Our aim is to utilize the handwriting technology to various applications such as Educational Software (Automatic Scoring Systems, Collaborative Learning, etc.), Web Applications, Support Systems for Decoding Japanese Historical Documents, Retrieval of Vietnamese Historical Documents (Chu Nom), etc. Requirements and feedbacks from the applications make the recognition technology more robust and versatile.
Another important topic is machine learning. Deep neural networks and Long short-term memory networks are now breaking new stages of pattern recognition. We are trying to apply them to handwriting recognition.
Currently, we are studying on Mathematical Expression Recognition, English Text Recognition, Text-NonText Separation, Reasseambling Fragmented of Historical Documents. Furthermore, we are planning to research on Sketch Diagram Recognition, Vietnamese Word and Text Recognition.
Principal Subjects of Research
- Handwriting Character Recognition
- Handwriting-based User Interface
- Human Interface
- Educational Software
- Historical Document Analysis, Recognition, and Retrieval