How can I recognize handwritten numbers within an image in an iOS app?

Question

I'm trying to develop an iOS app that allows the user to take a photograph of a handwritten phone number. Is there any library available that will allow me to extract the numerical values from the handwriting in this picture?

Answer 1

First you need to use OCR to recognize the text from the image. One of the most popular open0source libraries used for iOS OCR is a Google-sponsored open source project called tesseract .

Here's how to compile OCR for iOS:

http://robertcarlsen.net/2010/09/24/compiling-tesseract-v3-for-iphone-1299

After you get the text, do this to call the number:

NSString *phoneURLString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"tel:%@", phoneNumberFromOCR];
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:phoneURLString]]];

I would put the above code in an IBAction connected to a button maybe called "Call", so when the user presses the "Call" button, this code is called and the number recognized from the image is called.

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

Try OpenCV and tesseract-ocr. Good luck, you've got your work cut out for you.

http://opencv.org/
https://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/