Technology

Panhinda opens new dimension in IT

Supporting computers to work in Sinhala

by Gamini Warushamana

The Department of Computer Science and Engineering (DCSE) of the University of Moratuwa is one of the prime computer engineering institutes in Sri Lanka. At the DCSE students learn IT, do research and add new products to the world. Panhinda is one such software developed at DCSE that supports computers to work in Sinhala. Recently a team of young graduates presented Panhinda at the Tech Ed-2006 organised by Microsoft.

Panhinda is a software product which is used for online (real time) Sinhala handwritten character recognition on PDAs (Personal Digital Assistant) and Tablet PCs. It is mainly designed for Microsoft Windows Mobile platform and is compatible with the Sinhala alphabet.

Panhinda is a final year project carried out by four undergraduates, Kasun Karunaratne, Charith Jayasundara, Nishan Pathiragoda and Harshana Ranmuthugala in collaboration with the Microsoft mobile research laboratory.

The Panhinda system implementation is mainly concentrated on optimisation of memory, processing and storage capacity to address the inherent low processing power and memory constraints on mobile devices. It demonstrates a recognition accuracy of 90% and resembles another milestone in localised computing, said Harshana Ranmutugala.

Ranmutugala explained the specifications of Panhida. There are many system usage benefits of Panhinda. User Specific Customisation Capabilities in Panhinda recognise specific characters and the system will recognise your hand writing. It will read what you write on PDAs real time.

The Suggestion generation facility will remind you the conflicting characters enabling you to correct it immediately. The Note Management Facility in Panhinda can transfer your notes to others via email, SMS or MMS. Panhinda also has e-Governance application capabilities.

This can be used in Divisional Secretariats, government ministries and other institutions to provide ICT enabled administrative services to clients in an efficient manner using Sinhala. Panhinda also has an input acquisition capability of using Sinhala.

This data can be directly fed into the databases for further use. All documents (such as birth certificate, marriage certificate) issued by government authorities can be transferred into electronic format instantly at the issuing point.

Panhinda can also be used for business purposes such as customer care in banking and customer support applications.

The system can be introduced as an alternative to the traditional document management approaches which are used in the business. The product is primarily targeted at mobile devices such as PDAs and can identify the entire Sinhala alphabet with significant accuracy. Apart from that it provides facilities for quick note taking and composing which will be particularly helpful in dynamic office environments as well as in day to day life.

Ranmutugala said that Panhinda will dramatically reduce the cost and time of information processing. It can be used as a platform for data input and collection or as a data acquisition platform since the handwriting is the most natural and convenient way of input acquisition and Panhinda has improved human computer interaction, Ranmutugala said.

The acquired data can be easily transformed into a computer domain without much effort. Panhinda will open a new dimension for media people working in local languages as Panhinda has electronic media applications and mass media journalism applications.

He said that journalists can have quick notes which needs to be noted by using Panhinda. The system can be customised to recognise user specific symbols assigned with Sinhala characters.

Later the notes can be transferred to others via email, SMS or MMS. Hence Panhinda reduces additional paperwork involved in traditional reporting as well as facilitates immediate reporting and publishing.

Panhinda will be in the market soon as commercial software with more features such as working facility in Tamil, work dictionary support for local languages, real time adaptation to user writing styles and implementation, training and accuracy enhancement facilities, Ranmutugala said.

Panhinda has the following supplementary utility programs

Pattern Analyser to model regular expressions relating to character pattern sequences. Sub pattern analysis and highlighting are some of the key features which are embedded with the tool.

Regular Expression Analyser to test state sequences against the given regular expressions. (Validity Test)

Hit Analyser to obtain most frequent state sequence for a given character along with the number of occurrences.

Code Filter to identify various pattern sequences for a given character. Different but frequent patterns are captured automatically and puts them into character profile catalogue.

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