Recognition of Kannada characters using deep learning approach

Abstract

Recognition of Kannada Characters is a complex task as the number of classes in Kannada language by considering all combinations of vowels and consonants is 623,893. In this paper, the complexity is reduced from 623,893 to just having 313 classes as Main aksharas (Vowel, Consonants,Vowel modifiers and Consonant modifiers) and 30 classes as vattu aksharas(conjuncts) by using two line segmentation. A novel CNN model for recognition of printed and handwritten Kannada characters is proposed. CNN model with two, three and four layers are designed for Main akshara and Vattu aksharas with different filter size. The database consists of total of 31,300 samples and 3000 samples of printed and handwritten characters of Main akshara and Vattu aksharas respectively. Simulation result revealed that CNN model with four layer architecture is the best model for recognition of Kannada characters. This model achieved a recognition accuracy of 98.83% and 99.29% for printed Main akshara and Vattu aksharas and 82.50% and 80.92% for handwritten main and vattu akshara respectively.