Mobile OCR

This project demonstrates the technical feasibility of Mobile OCR, a portable software module which makes use of existing personal devices to provide access to textual materials for the elderly or the visually impaired. The system helps low vision individuals with basic activities in their daily lives, such as shopping, preparing meals, taking medication, and reading traffic signs. MobileOCR steps beyond the compementary MobileEyes vision enhancement system to apply cutting edge recognition technology for mobile devices. The system uses common camera phone hardware to capture and enhance textual information, perform Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and provide feedback through audio or visual means. The recognized text can be spoken out through Text-to-Speech (TTS), or displayed on the device with enhanced quality which can be easily read by low vision users.

Compared with existing vision enhancement devices, such as magnifying glasses, telescopes, and text reading devices such as scanner-based OCR, our solution has several advantages: 1) it makes use of a single, portable device (camera cell phone) that is commonly available and typically already carried for its telecommunications capabilities; 2) it can be used selectively by users so they will not be overwhelmed by irrelevant information; and 3) it can be integrated directly with other applications for specialized tasks.

Our research will impact the millions of low-vision individuals and the blind, as well as vision and computer vision researchers.