Location information recognition apparatus and method and recording medium
First Claim
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1. A location information recognition apparatus for recognizing location information written on a letter and constituted by categories which form a hierarchical structure with a plurality of stages varying with countries, comprising:
- storing means storing dictionaries of a plurality of countries and recognition procedures of a plurality of countries, each of said recognition procedures corresponding to each category of the hierarchical structure with a plurality of stages of the location information;
selecting means selecting a dictionary and a procedure respectively from said plurality of dictionaries and said plurality of recognition procedures in accordance with a country in which the apparatus is provided; and
recognizing means recognizing the location information using the selected dictionary in accordance with the recognition procedure selected by said selecting means, wherein the selecting means selects a dictionary and a procedure in advance of recognition.
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Abstract
This invention is to construct and address recognition apparatus using uniform hardware without customizing apparatuses dedicated to different countries even when the address form changes depending on the country. Hence, location information in various countries can be recognized by only a small modification.
40 Citations
10 Claims
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1. A location information recognition apparatus for recognizing location information written on a letter and constituted by categories which form a hierarchical structure with a plurality of stages varying with countries, comprising:
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storing means storing dictionaries of a plurality of countries and recognition procedures of a plurality of countries, each of said recognition procedures corresponding to each category of the hierarchical structure with a plurality of stages of the location information;
selecting means selecting a dictionary and a procedure respectively from said plurality of dictionaries and said plurality of recognition procedures in accordance with a country in which the apparatus is provided; and
recognizing means recognizing the location information using the selected dictionary in accordance with the recognition procedure selected by said selecting means, wherein the selecting means selects a dictionary and a procedure in advance of recognition. - View Dependent Claims (3, 7, 8, 9, 10)
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2. A location information recognition method of recognizing a location information constituted by categories which form a hierarchical structure with a plurality of stages varying with countries, comprising:
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storing dictionaries of a plurality of countries and recognition procedures of a plurality of countries, each of said recognition procedures corresponding to each category of the hierarchical structure with a plurality of stages of the location information;
selecting one of the dictionaries and one of the recognition procedures respectively from said plurality of dictionaries and said plurality of recognition procedures in accordance with a country in which the apparatus is provided; and
performing recognition processing on the basis of the selected dictionary and recognition procedure.
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4. A location information recognition apparatus comprising:
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read means reading a location information image;
line detection means detecting one or some character lines from the location information image read by said read means;
region detection means detecting one or some regions where location information is written from the location information image read by said read means;
location information word detection means dividing the character line detected by said line detection means and included in the location information region detected by said region detection means into one or a plurality of word regions;
first word recognition means recognizing the word by collating character information included in a first word region obtained by said location information word detection means with a content of a word dictionary in which the place names present in the area as the recognition target are registered and outputting a word evaluation value of the recognition result;
determination means determining whether the character information included in the first word region processed by said first word recognition means satisfies a condition for dividing the first word region into a plurality of words, wherein the condition is determined to be satisfied in a case where a distance between a certain consecutive two characters constituting a word is larger than a distance between other consecutive two characters constituting the same word;
second word recognition means recognizing the word by collating character information included in a third word region which connects the first word region processed by said first word recognition means and a second word region adjacent to the first word region in a same line with the content of the word dictionary and outputting a word evaluation value of the recognition result, and output means comparing the word evaluation value of the recognition result by said first word recognition means with the word evaluation value of the recognition result by said second word recognition means and outputting the recognition result having a larger word evaluation value. - View Dependent Claims (5, 6)
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Specification