http://www.ai.rug.nl/~jpoosten/teaching/hwr/2010/
Period 2b (block 4), 2010
Progress code: KIM.SCHR03
In this course you learn how an automatic handwriting recognizer works. You will make a recognizer yourself and write a scientific report on it. (Have a peek at Assignment 4 to get an impression.)
The handwriting material for this course is historical handwriting from the "Queen's Cabinet" (Kabinet der Koningin) (stored at the Dutch National Archive, Nationaal Archief, Den Haag) as shown in the figure to the right.
Several smaller assignments are steps towards the final assignment and report. Some of the assignments will be tested on a separate (secret) test set; the results will be shown in a live highscore online. You must work in groups of 2–4 persons.
On Wednesday* Prof. dr.
Schomaker first gives a lecture. After that, one or two students give
an oral presentation. This presentation counts for 10% of your final grade.
Send us the outline of your presentation (either copy/pasted from the outline
view of power point or the draft of your power point slides themselves) on
the monday before your presentation, before 18:00.
* Please note that an extra lecture is scheduled in week 19, May 10 (9-11h).
On Thursday** practical sessions supervised by Jean-Paul van Oosten are
scheduled; you can use these to work on the practical assignments. At least one
computer is available for each group. Programming is done in a combination of
Python and C++: Python for quickly creating the general framework; C++ for the
low-level procedures.
** Please note that an extra practical is scheduled
in week 19, May 10 (11-13h).
All deadlines are on monday, 18:00 (see the table below). You may twice extend any deadline with exactly one week. If you missed more, then all your submissions will be taken as submissions for the repeat (herkansing) (see below).
Grades appear in Nestor. The final grade appears in Progress. There is no exam other than the mentioned assignments.
Repeat (herkansing): deadline August 31, 2010. Submit only assignment 5 (30%) and your report (60%); make an agreement with Jean-Paul about a date (31 August or earlier) for your presentation (10%).
| Week | Lecture | Student presentation (10%) | Practical | Assignment |
| 16 |
Wed. April 21 Introduction (sheets), determine presentation dates, history of scripts (sheets). |
(none) | Introduction | (none) |
| 17 |
Wed. April 28 Human writing (sheets), human reading (sheets), lxj encoding. |
Gido Schoenmacker: Human reading | Work on ass. 1 | Assignment 1: Projection profiles 0%, obligatory, deadline May 3 |
| 18 | (none) | (none) | Work on ass. 2 | (none) |
| 19 |
Mon. May 10, 9-11h Features (sheets) |
Paul Neculoiu: Motor Control Handwriting Erik Meuwese: Writer identification+verification Jasper Smit: Writer identification+verification |
Mon. May 10, 11-13h Work on ass. 2 |
(none) |
| 19 | Wed. May 12 Crash course in pattern classification (sheets), classification of handwriting. |
Florin Schimbinschi: Motor Control Handwriting Luc Vlaming: Pattern Recognition |
Work on ass. 2 | Assignment 2: Word zone hypotheses 5%, deadline May 17 highscore |
| 20 | Wed. May 19 Off-line recognition, preprocessing, segmentation, Writer verification and identification. |
Bas Hickendorff: Off line HWR Liewe Kwakman: Off line HWR Gjalt Bearda: Preprocessing of images in HWR Jaap Oosterbroek: Preprocessing of images in HWR |
Work on ass. 4 | Assignment 3: Literature study 0%, obligatory, deadline May 24 |
| 21 | Wed. May 26 Language and context modeling, Hidden Markov Models. |
Ron Snijders: On line HWR Daniel Wedema: Hidden Markov Models in HWR Erik Meuwese: Linguistic Postprocessing |
Work on ass. 4 | Assignment 4: First recognizer 5%, deadline May 31 highscore |
| 22 | Wed. June 2 Team reports by the students. |
t.b.d. | Work on ass. 5 | (none) |
| 23 | (none) | (none) | (none) | Assignment 5: Final recognizer 20%, deadline June 14 highscore |
| 24 | (none) | (none) | (none) | (none) |
| 25 | (none) | (none) | (none) | (none) |
| 26 | (none) | (none) | (none) | Assignment 6: Report 60%, deadline July 5 |
Notes:
Direct your questions to Jean-Paul van Oosten.
Last modified: april 13th, 2010, by Jean-Paul