Handwritten alphanumeric character recognition by the neocognitron.

A pattern recognition system which works with the mechanism of the neocognitron, a neural network model for deformation-invariant visual pattern recognition, is discussed. The neocognition was developed by Fukushima (1980). The system has been trained to recognize 35 handwritten alphanumeric characters. The ability to recognize deformed characters correctly depends strongly on the choice of the training pattern set. Some techniques for selecting training patterns useful for deformation-invariant recognition of a large number of characters are suggested.