Text recognition, also termed as Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is the process of converting printed or handwritten text into a digital format.
It is a significant and continuous area of research in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Computer Vision, which means new and better areas of applications continue to rise.
However, there are a few areas where OCR can be expected to work most wonderfully, they are listed as follows:
OCR for Robotics
OCR is also very useful in robotics, for example, industrial robots may need to read the text embedded on different machines and their parts to identify them and perform tasks like: pick and place, module assembly, repair, maintenance check etc.
Automatic License Plate Checking System
Automatic Number-Plate Recognition (ANPR) is a huge usage for OCR in reading and identifying numbers on license plates. Today, number-plate recognition is used in a very diverse set of commercial applications, such as:
To find stolen cars
Calculate fees for parking
Toll booths for automatic toll taxing
Access control to safety zones, and more
Scanning of Textual documents
Since all processes are being digitalized in business, government and more or less every aspect of human life where written work is required, OCR technology is becoming more and more widespread.
Banking industry and finance sector use OCR to automate many processes such as handling cheques. Handwritten cheques are scanned, their contents are digitized and signature is verified, all without human involvement.
While 100% accuracy in handwritten documents is still far fetched, latest deep learning algorithms in AI are driving us closer to this dream and one day we might even achieve it.
Legal industry is by far the highest user of written text and documents, this is the reason OCR is high prevalence in this industry to digitalize various legal documents.
Translation of Languages
Text recognition of different languages can help make instant translation of multiple languages possible.
This has inspired instant exchange of information across a wide range of industries and has thus significantly influenced the modern way of doing business.
Using text recognition of multiple languages, someone in a different part of the world, is able to communicate and transact businesses with someone sitting in another part of the world by using a preferred OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software interface. The OCR software converts/translates and exchanges crucial messages thus making communication between people knowing different languages possible.
