Abstract

The theory of fuzzy set provides an approximate but effective means of describing the behavior of ill-defined systems. Patterns such as handwritten characters are to some extent found to be fuzzy in nature. It is decided to use fuzzy conceptual approach effectively. In this paper, we propose a new scheme for the recognition of off-line handwritten English numerals. In the proposed scheme, the binary image of the character is partitioned into a fixed number of sub-images called boxes. The features consist of normalized vector distances from each box. These features give rise to fuzzy sets. However, the selection of the proper fuzzification function is essential. Hence we have devised a new fuzzification function which takes into account the variations in the fuzzy sets. These parameters are obtainable by optimization