Overlapped handwriting input on mobile phones

In this paper, we propose an overlapped handwriting input method on handheld devices, which allows users to write continuously without breaks on a single size-restricted writing area. 2 issues have been considered during the implementation of the overlapped input method: previous characters on the background may obstruct the clear viewing of current character and the messy overlapped handwriting is difficult to be segmented and recognized. In our method, a quick segmentation method based on an artificial neural network is used to tackle the first problem and a novel system is implemented to recognize the messy handwriting based on the output of an isolated character recognition engine and a language model. The recognition rate for Chinese characters is about 92.5% for a testing database containing GB2312 Chinese characters and other frequently used symbols. The positive feedbacks from testers have also confirmed the validity of the proposed method.