The One Cent Recognizer: A Fast, Accurate, and Easy-to-Implement Handwritten Gesture Recognition Technique

Abstract

We present the One Cent Recognizer, an easy-to-implement, efficient, and accurate handwritten gesture recognizer. By applying time series recognition techniques, we have developed a minimally complex technique that is both much faster than and at least as accurate as the Dollar Recognizer. Additionally, the One Cent Recognizer is much easier to implement than the Dollar Recognizer. Our technique is primarily enabled by a simple and novel one-dimensional representation of handwritten pen strokes. This representation is intrinsically rotation invariant, allowing our technique to avoid costly rotate-and-check searches typically employed in prior template-based gesture recognition techniques. In experiments, our technique has proven to be two orders of magnitude faster than the Dollar Recognizer.