EzTran: A Mobile-based Chinese Character Recognition and Translation Service System

近年來由於智慧型手機和無線通訊技術的普及，以及智慧型手機附加了解析度良好的拍照功能及螢幕觸控功能，許多有趣的應用也因此而產生，像是QR code的解碼應用、旅遊地點推薦與標註、商標辨識等功能，皆大幅提升人類生活的便利性。雖然智慧型手機提供了許多實用的功能，但以外國人來台灣旅遊為例，不懂中文或其拼音方法，極有可能會遇到在手持裝置上查詢不便的問題。即使非外國人，對一般人來說，在手機上輸入文字本身就不是一件方便的事情。基於這個想法，本論文提出一個建立於行動裝置上的文字辨識及翻譯服務系統－EzTran，使用者只要使用手機拍照功能搭配本系統的使用者介面來拍攝有興趣的中文文字，便可辨識文字並得到英文翻譯結果及其相關資訊。 EzTran系統期望讓身於戶外的使用者、不方便在手持裝置上打字輸入的老人家和看不懂中文的外國人藉由人性化的使用者介面，打破文字輸入之不便及語言隔閡，能夠很便利地獲得文字翻譯結果與其相關情報。另外，我們以「以辨識招牌為輔助的食物推薦系統」為例，展示EzTran可與其他系統整合，利用其文字辨識來改善人機互動的友善度。 實驗結果顯示，EzTran是一個擁有不錯的辨識率的即時性系統，並且可做為與其他應用完善整合的人機介面前端技術。As the popularity of smart phone and wireless technologies, people are getting used to search for information from the Internet anytime and everywhere. In addition, since the resolution of embedded cameras on mobile devices becomes higher and most smart phones are equipped with the touch screen, a large number of interesting and useful applications have been proposed to improve human life. It is observed that although the translation function can be commonly seen on mobile phones, it is very difficult for foreigners to type Chinese characters for searching. Moreover, for native users, it is still time-consuming and inconvenient to type Chinese characters on portable devices. To solve these problems, we propose a Chinese character recognition and translation service system, EzTran, which is a practical system that provides users to get the translated result in English and the related web pages searched from Google search engine easily by only snapping the text photo. Moreover, EzTran can also be integrated with other applications. In this thesis, we demonstrate the implementation of a food recommendation system with a shop sign recognition scheme. Extensive experiments have been conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed system. Experimental results show that EzTran can generate translation outputs in real time with satisfactory recognition accuracy