Abstract: Highly accurate, reliable optical character recognition is afforded by a layered network having several layers of constrained feature detection wherein each layer of constrained feature detection includes a plurality of constrained feature maps and a corresponding plurality of feature reduction maps. Each feature reduction map is connected to only one constrained feature map in the same layer for undersampling that constrained feature map. Units in each constrained feature map of the first constrained feature detection layer respond as a function of a corresponding kernel and of different portions of the pixel image of the character captured in a receptive field associated with the unit.

Abstract: Highly accurate, reliable optical character recognition is afforded by a hierarchically layered network having several layers of parallel constrained feature detection for localized feature extraction followed by several fully connected layers for dimensionality reduction. Character classification is also performed in the ultimate fully connected layer. Each layer of parallel constrained feature detection comprises a plurality of constrained feature maps and a corresponding plurality of kernels wherein a predetermined kernel is directly related to a single constrained feature map. Undersampling is performed from layer to layer.