Among various characters invented by the human being ,Kanji (Chinese character) is outstanding in its diversity and complexity, in contrast to Roman alphanumerics. So machine recognition of handwritten characters requires particular technics. This paper concerns commercially available optical character readers (OCRs) and the recognition techniques using therein. Methods of character recognition is classified the pattern types and the method of extracting features, to discuss the present states of the character recognition. In regard to the structural analysis, the proposed techniques are classified and discussed in accordance with the extraction method of line segment and axial correlation. Finally, various techniques are compared with one another by using a common database, so as to understand the present states of character recognition and to discuss the technical trends.

This paper proposes a new approach for inputting handwritten Distribution Facility Drawings (DFD) and their maps into a computer automatically by using the Facility Management Database (FMD). Our recognition method makes use of external information for drawing/map recognition. It identifies each electric-pole symbol and support cable symbol on drawings simply by consulting the FMD. Other symbols such as transformers and electric wires can be placed on drawings automatically. In this positioning of graphic symbols, we present an automatic adjustment method of a symbol's position on the latest digital maps. When a contradiction is unsolved due to an inconsistency between the content of the DFD and the FMD, the system requests a manual feedback from the operator. Furthermore, it uses the distribution network of the DFD to recognize the street lines on the maps which aren't computerized. This can drastically reduce the cost for computerizing drawings and maps.

This paper describes an on-line Kanji character recognition method that solves the one-to-one stroke correspondence problem with both the stroke-number and stroke-order variations common in cursive Japanese handwriting. We propose two kinds of complementary algorithms: one dissolves excessive mapping and the other dissolves deficient mapping. Their joint use realizes stable optimal stroke correspondence without combinatorial explosion. Also, three kinds of inter-stroke distances are devised to deal with stroke concatenation or splitting and heavy shape distortion. These new ideas greatly improve the stroke matching ability of the selective stroke linkage method reported earlier by the authors. In experiments, only a single reference pattern for each of 2,980 Kanji character categories is generated by using training data composed of 120 patterns written carefully with the correct stroke-number and stroke-order. Recognition tests are made using the training data and two kinds of test data in the square style and in the cursive style written by 36 different people; recognition rates of 99.5%, 97.6%, and 94.1% are obtained, respectively. Moreover, comparative results obtained by the current OCR technique as applied to bitmap patterns of on-line character data are presented. Finally, future work for enhancing the stroke matching approach to cursive Kanji character recognition is discussed.

A new neural network for locating a source by integrating data from a number of sensors is considered. The network gives a solution for inverse problems using a back-propagation algorithm with the architecture to get the solution in the inter-layer weights in a coded form Three different physical quantities are applied to the network, since the scheme has three independent ports; an input port, a tutorial port and an answer port. Our architecture is useful to estimate z" in the problem whose structure is y=f(x,z) where y is the observed data, x is the sensor position and z is the source location. The network integrates the information obtained from a number of sensors and estimates the location of the source. We apply the network to two problems of location estimation: the localization of the active nerves from their evoked potential waveforms and the localization of objects from their echoes using an active sonar system.

A miniature transceiver, including highly integrated MMIC front-end, for 1.9 GHz band personal handy phone system(PHS) has been developed. The terminal, adopting direct conversion transmitter and receiver technology, consists of four high-density RF circuit modules and a digital signal processing LSI with 2.7 V power supply. The four functional modules are a power amplifier, a transmitter,a receiver, and a frequency synthesizer. Each functional module includes one IC chip and passive LCR components connected with solder bumps on module substrate. The experimental miniature PHS handset has been fabricated to verify the design concepts of the miniature transceiver. The total volume of the developed PHS terminal is 60cc, including the 12cc front-end which comprises the four RF functional circuit modules. The air interface connection with the PHS base station simulator has been confirmed.

This paper discusses visualization of temporal and spatial information in natural language descriptions (NLDs), focusing on the translation process of intermediate representations of NLDs to proper scenarios" and environments" for animations. First, the intermediate representations are shown according to the idea of actors. Actors and non-actors are represented as primitives of objects, whereas actions as those of events. Temporal and spatial constraints by a given NLD text are imposed upon the primitives. Then, the representations containing unknown temporal or spatial parameters --time and coordinates-- are translated into evaluation functions, where the unlikelihood of the deviations from the predicted temporal or spatial relations are estimated. Particularly, the functions concerning actor's movements contain both temporal and spatial parameters. Next, the sum of all the evaluation functions is minimized by a nonlinear optimization method. Thus, the most proper actors' time-table, or scenario, and non-actors' location-table, or environment, for visualization are obtained. Implementation and experiments show that both temporal and spatial information in NLDs are well connected through actors' movements for visualization.

The global interpolation method we proposed can extract a handwritten alpha-numeric character pattern even if it overlaps a border. Our method interpolates blank segments in a character after borders are removed by evaluating segment pattern continuity and connectedness globally to produce characters with smooth edges. The main feature of this method is to evaluate global component label connectivity as pattern connectedness. However, it is impossible for the method to interpolate missing superpositioning loop segments, because they lack segment pattern continuity and they have already had global component label connectivity. To solve this problem, we improved the method by adding loop interpolation as a global evaluation. The evaluation of character segment continuity is also improved to achieve higher quality character patterns. There is no database of overlapping characters, so we also propose an evaluation method which generates various kinds of overlapping numerals from an ETL database. Experimental results using these generated patterns showed that the improved global interpolation method is very effective for numbers that overlap a border.

This paper describes COCE (COordinative Character Extractor), a method for extracting printed Japanese characters and their character strings from all sorts of document images. COCE is based on a multi-agent system where each agent tries to find a character string and extracts the characters in it. For the adaptability, the agents are allowed to look after arbitrary parts of documents and extract the characters using only the knowledge independent of the layouts. Moreover, the agents check and correct their results sometimes with the help of the other agents. From experimental results, we have verified the effectiveness of our approach.

This paper consists of two parts. The first part is devoted to comparative study on handwritten ZIP code numeral recognition using seventeen typical feature vectors and seven statistical classifiers. This part is the counterpart of the sister paper Handwritten Postal Code Recognition by Neural Network - A Comparative Study" in this special issue. In the second part, a procedure for feature synthesis from the original feature vectors is studied. In order to reduce the dimensionality of the synthesized feature vector, the effect of the dimension reduction on classification accuracy is examined. The best synthesized feature vector of size 400 achieves remarkably higher recognition accuracy than any of the original feature vectors in recognition experiment using a large number of numeral samples collected from real postal ZIP codes.

Through comparing the results of two successive IPTP Character Recognition Competitions which focused on 3-digit handprinted postal codes, we herein analyze the methodologies of the submitted algorithms along with the substituted or rejected patterns of these algorithms. Regarding their methodologies, lesser diversity was apparent specifically concerning the contour-chain code based on local stroke directions and statistical discriminant functions for feature extraction and discrimination. Analysis of the patterns demonstrated that the misrecognized patterns being most often improved were categorized as a decrease in peculiarly shaped handwritten characters or heavy-handed and disconnected strokes. However, most of the remaining misrecognitions were still classed as peculiarly shaped handwriting as commonly shared between the best three algorithms. From these analyses, we could delineate a direction to be taken for developing more effective methodologies and clarify the remaining problems to be overcome by the subsequent intensive research. Furthermore, we evaluate in this article our multi-expert recognition system for achieving higher recognition performances by means of combining complementary recognition algorithms. We performed a subsequent investigation of the Candidate Appearance Likelihood Method using novel experimental conditions and a new examination of the application of the neural network as the combining method for accumulating the broader candidate appearances. The results obtained confirm that combining through the neural network constitutes one of the most effective ways of making the multi-expert recognition system a reality.

We have shown a non-invasive method for estimating transient changes in aortic flow and ventricular volume based on optimal control theory by using successful simulations of reported experimental data. The performance function to evaluate the optimality of the cardiovascular system was proposed based oh physical, fluid mechanical and pathophysiological considerations. It involved the work of the ventricle, the rate of changes in the aortic flow and the ventricular pressure. We determined that the cardiovascular system operates optimally when the performance function has been minimized. The relative magnitudes of the reductions of changes in these terms were expressed by the weighting coefficients. The arterial system was described by the Wind Kessel model using arterial resistance, aortic compliance and aortic valvular resistance. We set boundary conditions and transitional conditions derived from the systolic and diastolic phases of the aortic flow and the arterial pressure. The optimized system equations were converted to 6 linear simultaneous differential equations with 6 boundary conditions. The optimal ventricular pressure and aortic flow rate that minimize the performance function were obtained by solving these differential equations. By alternating the weighting coefficients of the work of ventricle and the rate of change in the ventricular ejection pressure, successful simulations of the ventricular pressures recorded from human subjects and those from isolated canine ventricle were obtained. Once the sets of weighting coefficients had been determined by successful simulations of ventricular pressures, the calculated aortic flow curves and pressure volume loops by the present method coincided with the reported experimental data. The changes in ventricular pressure and aortic flow produced by alternating the weighting coefficients to simulate the reported ventricular pressures and aortic flow curves under the different afterload conditions were consistent with biophysical experimental data. The present method is useful to estimata aortic flow curve and ventricular pressure volume loops non-invasively.

A flat stick-shaped whip antenna was developed for Japanese commercial portable telephones. It provides a high gain even though it is short and retractable. It is an open-sleeve type antenna. i.e., the inductance-loaded dipoleantenna element parallels a twin-lead type feeder. It suppresses the currents on the radio housing even at short antenna lengths. Moreover, it is easy to achieve two resonant characteristies and able to construct retractable type. A relatively high gain is gotten even when the antenna is in a retracted state. This antenna has a suitable configuration for commercial portable telephones. This paper first calculates, the current suppression of the housing on a principal model of this antenna, i.e., without a twin-lead feeder. The second analysis determines the effects of the twin-lead feeder and the dielectric coat on the antenna. Next,the two resonant technique and the configuration for the retractable-type antenna describes. In addition, the return loss and radiation pattern for the trial model were measured. The return loss shows that the two resonant characteristics and the bandwidths of the high and low resonant frequencies are 2.2% and 1.5%(VSWR2), respectively. For when the antenna is extended, radiation patterns are nearly the same as for the case of the 1/2 wavelength dipole antenna, and the antenna efficiencies are -1.6 dB at 820 MHz and -1.1 dB at 950 MHz. Other hand, for the retracted state, they are destroyed by the housing currents, but the efficiency is relatively high of -1.8 dB at 950 MHz. In these experiments, it is clear that the antenna achieves high performances.

The coupling response of an external transient electromagnetic field to a transmission line is considered. An experiment has been conducted to verify the line equations for a transmission line excited externally by a transient near field. The model field is generated by a monopole antenna installed in the vicinity of the transmission line and driven by a step waveform. The waveform is analyzed into discrete spectrum components using a Fourier transform. The frequency-domain field components affecting the transmission line are estimated by the moment method, and then the induced frequency-domain voltage at the terminal load is converted into a time-domain voltage using an inverse Fourier transform. Comparison between the measured and the computed values provides verification of the line equations. The coupling mechanism is discussed from the experimental results. It seems equivalently that the transmission line picks up the field, generated at the feed point and the top point of the monopole antenna, at both terminal ends.

A high speed and low power consumption SCFL circuit design with low supply voltage is proposed. Focusing on the relationship between logic swing and supply voltage, the lower limit for the supply voltage is presented. Theoretical analysis and circuit simulation indicates that the logic swing needs to be optimized to maintain high average gm within the swing. An SCFL D-FF fabricated using a 0.25 µm n-AlGaAs/i-InGaAs HJFET process operates at up to 10 Gbps with power consumption as low as 19 mW at a supply voltage of 1.3 V.

This paper presents a parallel move generation of a Chess machine system for achieving the purpose of reducing the number of move generation cycles. The parallel system is composed of five move generation modules which share the move generating cycles to reduce the time of building a game tree. Simulation results show that the proposed parallel move generation architecture takes about half of the number of move generation cycles to build a game tree that is the same as the one built by a sequential move generation module.

With increases in the speed of semiconductor devices and integrated circuits, the importance of internal testing with sufficient temporal resolution has been growing. This paper describes recently established electro-optic testing technologies based on pulse lasers and electro-optic crystal probes. Practicability, limitation and future issues are discussed.

Over the past few years, many industrial processes have switched to electrical processes from conventional fossil fuel as a primary energy source, since electricity can be transmitted more economically than the transport of fossil fuels, as well as less pollution problems and labour- and spacesaving nature. For the environmental protections, ozone generation for water treatments, and decomposition of pollution gases such as SOx, NOx, COx, etc., by high pressure gas discharge processes become an important research subject. However, due to the early stage of development, the EMC problem is not yet well considered. In this review, we try to address the EMC problem in the various atmospheric pressure gas discharge processing techniques and identify future needs of research.

This paper investigates some fundamental properties of alternating one-way (or two-way) pushdown automata (pda's) with sublogarithmic space. We first show that strongly (weakly) sublogarithmic space-bounded two-way alternating pda's are more powerful than one-way alternating pda's with the same space-bound. Then, we show that weakly sublogarithmic space-bounded two-way (one-way) alternating pda's are more powerful than two-way (one-way) nondeterministic pda's and alternating pda's with only universal states using the same space, and we also show that weakly sublogarithmic space-bounded one-way nondeterministic Turing machines are incomparable with one-way alternating Turing machines with only universal states using the same space. Furthermore, we investigate several fundamental closure properties, and show that the class of languages accepted by weakly sublogarithmic space-bounded one-way alternating pda's and the class of languages accepted by sublogarithmic space-bounded two-way deterministic pda's (nondeterministic pda's, alternating pda's with only universal states) are not closed under concatenation, Kleene closure, and length preserving homomorphism. Finally, we briefly investigate a relationship between 'strongly' and 'weakly'.

A calibrating analog-to digital (A/D) converter employing a T-Model neural network is described. The T-Model neural-based A/D converter architecure is presented with particular emphasis on the elimination of local minimum of the Hopfield neural network. Furthermore, a teacher forcing algorithm is presented and used to synthesize the A/D converter and correct errors of the converter due to offset and device mismatch. An experimental A/D converter using standard 5-µm CMOS discrete IC circuits demonstrates high-performance analog-to-digital conversion and calibrating.

An ordered binary decision diagram (OBDD) is a directed acyclic graph for representing a Boolean function. OBDDs are widely used in various areas which require Boolean function manipulation, since they can represent efficiently many practical Boolean functions and have other desirable properties. However, there is very little theoretical research on the complexity of constructing an OBDD. In this paper, we prove that the optimal variable ordering problem of a shared BDD is NP-complete, and briefly discuss the approximation hardness of this problem and related OBDD problems.