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STAFF REPORT ISB: Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunications (MoIT) is implementing a project to develop an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Engine for Android to stimulate smartphones software development in the country.
The project called – Smart Intelligence – an OCR Engine for Android Smartphone – intends to develop a state-of-the-art OCR Engine which can be used by developers to produce their own applications.
National ICT R and D Fund is implementing the project in collaboration with Abasyn University, Islamabad at a cost of Rs 13.33 million.
“In the first phase the intent is to tackle the character recognition problem for constrained or structured document images and in the next phase character recognition problem for unconstrained or unstructured document images will be addressed,” said an official.
He said that only after the availability of iPhone and Android enabled smartphones, the world has seen the availability of the powerful APIs for smartphone applications development.Success of this project would not only result in research experience and related advantages for the developers inside Pakistan but will also stimulate the smartphones software development in Pakistan.
It would also provide a great opportunity to the students and researchers to universities to work on top notch research problems in the field. Open source nature of the project would encourage collaboration from developers all over the world.