Hitachi Ltd claims to have has developed artificial intelligence technology that will make the input of Japanese language to computers, which is still a barrier to many people’s use of computers, an easier task: the system combines an image scanner with an image recognition knowledge base of several thousand data items and about 1,500 rules, which are used to determine the size, shape, justification and spacing of hand-written characters; the system will be incorporated in software for personal computers and word processors over the next six months and used to read hand-written forms such as invoices.
