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<H1 ALIGN=CENTER>Recognition Technology Product Vendors</H1>
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<P>These are not the only companies in these areas, but they're
major players and ones of which I have some direct knowledge. In many cases
the early leaders are still the best in terms of accuracy and features,
but competition has pushed them all forward.</P>
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<TD><i>Company logos are clickable.</i></TD>
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<TH height=28 colspan=2><hr><font size=+2>OCR / ICR / Documents</font><hr></TH>
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<TD HEIGHT=20 align=right valign=center><A HREF="http://www.miteksys.com">
<IMG SRC="images/mitek.gif" ALT="Mitek logo" BORDER=0 ></A></TD>
<TD WIDTH=100%><A HREF="http://www.miteksys.com">Mitek Systems</A>: handprint
and machineprint alphanumeric ICR in software or hardware, also
special-purpose recognition such as CAR for personal checks.
Mitek is in the top tier for handprint recognition accuracy and one
of a very few with a credible handprint alpha capability.
</TD>
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<TD HEIGHT=20 align=right valign=center><A HREF="http://www.caere.com">
<IMG SRC="images/caere.gif" ALT="Caere logo" BORDER=0 ></A></TD>
<TD><A HREF="http://www.caere.com">Caere</A>: Machineprint
recognition,
including page decomposition. Includes what was formerly the Calera product
line. At or near the top for accuracy in UNLV's annual tests of
machineprint-only engines. </TD>
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<TD HEIGHT=20 align=right valign=center>
(<A HREF="http://www.ncs.com/ncscorp/nestor">NCS</A>)
<!IMG SRC="images/butn-gry.gif" ALT="NCS button" BORDER=0> </TD>
<TD>
<A HREF="http://www.ncs.com/ncscorp/nestor">NCS
Recognition Products Group</a>
(formerly Nestor Imaging Systems). Earliest handprint recognition
vendor to make the jump to software-only solutions, including the
<A HREF="http://www.ncs.com/ncscorp/nestor/nreader.htm">NestorReader</a>
recognition engine and forms processing toolkit (the latter was
formerly called OmniTools). Their N'Route fax router can parse
handwritten cover sheets.</TD>
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<TD HEIGHT=20 align=right valign=center>
(<A href="http://www.cgk.de/english/psw_e.htm">CGK</A>)</TD>
<TD><A href="http://www.cgk.de/english/psw_e.htm">Computer Gesellschaft
Konstanz</a> now owns the technology formerly known as AEG
Recognition. (CGK and AEG were offshoots of the same lab,
and have long had adjoining facilities in Konstanz.)
I know and like the AEG ICR products, which have a long history, a large
installed base and are among the most accurate for handprint (roughly
comparable to Mitek.) Marketing in the US
has been sporadic in the past few years as AEG changed ownership several
times. The respected, fast, accurate
(and very expensive) hardware PLE
6160 (pictured at <A HREF="http://mannet.mcb.net/jmi/app.html#ple 6160 icr">JMI
Software</A>'s site) has evidently been supplanted by the
software embodiment of the same algorithms (following a trend started by
Nestor and Mitek.)
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<TH height=30 colspan=2><hr><font size=+2>Voice Recognition</font><hr></TH>
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<TD align=right valign=center><A HREF="http://www.dragonsys.com">
<IMG SRC="images/drsys40t.gif" ALT="Dragon Systems"
BORDER=0 HEIGHT=82 WIDTH=130></a>
</TD>
<TD><A HREF="http://www.dragonsys.com">Dragon Systems</A>' founders were
instrumental in the shift from dynamic programming to Hidden Markov
Models for speech recognition, enabling larger vocabularies and greater
tolerance of speaker variations. This has allowed development of
<a href=
"http://www.dragonsys.com/marketing/dragondictate.html">DragonDictate</a>
and similar products which allow "hands off" entry of nearly free-form
material.
This year Dragon introduced
<a href="http://www.dragonsys.com/marketing/pcproducts.html">
Naturally Speaking</a>, the first and still
the best product to allow true continuous speech. Naturally Speaking
won <i>every</i> major award given at the 1997 Comdex show.
Both products have
performed impressively well for me.
<br>
<i>I believe Dragon's dictation products to be absolutely the best
on the market.</i>
</TD>
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<TD align=right valign=center><A HREF="http://www.verbex.com">
<IMG SRC="images/vbxlogo.gif" ALT="Verbex logo" BORDER=0 ></A></TD>
<TD><A HREF="http://www.verbex.com">Verbex</A> offers "continuous" (actually
connected) recognition under Windows environment, using a standard sound
card or a special hardware accelerator.
Initially applied in various "hands-busy" industrial settings,
now aiming at end users and as bundled software. Their Web site has
a <a href="http://www.verbex.com/demo.htm">demo</a>.</TD>
</TR>
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<TD align=right valign=center><A HREF="http://www.nuancecom.com">
<IMG SRC="images/nuancelogo.jpg" ALT="Nuance Comm. logo" BORDER=0></A></TD>
<TD><a HREF="http://www.nuancecom.com">
Nuance Communications</a> delivers Conversational Transaction software,
combining highly accurate speech recognition with natural language
understanding. Their recognition technology is speaker independent,
scales from small to very large vocabularies, and works over the telephone
(try their
<a href="http://www.nuancecom.com/Demos/better-banking.html">
Better Banking demo</a>).
Nuance focuses on cost effective telephony solutions for automating call
centers. In addition to the Nuance Recognizer, Nuance also has
Developer's Toolkit, preconfigured speech action
libraries, and design consulting services to enable rapid development of
quality applications.
</TD>
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<TD align=right valign=center><A HREF="http://www.entropic.com">
<IMG SRC="images/entropicsm.gif" ALT="Entropic logo" BORDER=0 ></A></TD>
<TD><A HREF="http://www.entropic.com">The Entropic Group</A>'s
products are directed at the speech processing R&D community and
include toolkits for developing HMM-based speech recognizers.
Their Web site has links to other speech-related sites and, if
your browser is suitably enabled, an interactive
<a href="http://www.entropic.com/ttdemo.html">demo</a> of their
TrueTalk text-to-speech product.</TD>
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<TH height=30 colspan=2><hr><font size=+2>
Other Pattern Recognition<br>(Fraud Detection, Data Mining, etc.)</font>
<hr></TH>
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<TD HEIGHT=34 align=right valign=center>
(<A HREF="http://www.nestor.com">Nestor</A>)</font>
<! IMG SRC="images/butn-gry.gif" ALT="Nestor logo" BORDER=0> </TD>
<TD> <A HREF="http://www.nestor.com">Nestor</A>'s
decision learning systems, primarily based on a proprietary
region-growing scheme called the "Restricted Coulomb Energy" (RLE)
network, were introduced somewhat before the widespread revival of
neural networks in the 1980's. Present products concentrate on
risk management and detection of fraud, e.g. in credit card
processing. Also designed (with Intel) the Ni1000 embedded
neural network, a hardware recognition accelerator chip.
</TD>
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<TD HEIGHT=34 align=right valign=center>
<A HREF="http://www.hnc.com">
<IMG SRC="images/hnclogo.gif" ALT="HNC logo" BORDER=0 HEIGHT=34></A></TD>
<TD> <A HREF="http://www.hnc.com">HNC Software</A> evolved from
Hecht-Neilsen Neurocomputers, a major force in the commercialization
of neural networks. Now concentrates on software for
decision support applications, including fraud detection and
information retrieval. Claims a trademark on the term Database
Mining®, and produces a workstation system to perform it.</TD>
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<td><font size=+1><i>Back to:</i></font></td>
<td><a href="pattern.html"><font size=+1>Pattern Recognition Page</font></a>
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<td><a href="http://alumni.caltech.edu/~dave"><font size=+1>
Dave Aragon's home page</font></a></td>
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<ADDRESS>
(no-frames version)<BR>
Page created by<A HREF="http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~dave">
David Bradburn Aragon</A>.<BR>
Last changed on December 11, 1997.<BR>
Company logos used by permission of their respective owners.
</ADDRESS>
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