Deep Convolutional Neural Network using a New Dataset for Berber Language

Abstract

Currently, Handwritten Character Recognition (HCR) technology has become an interesting and immensely useful technology. It has been explored with highperformance in many languages. However, a few HCR systems are proposed for the Amazigh (Berber) language. Furthermore, the validation of any Amazighhandwritten recognition system remains a major challenge due to no availability of a robust Amazigh database. To address this problem, we first created two new datasets for Tifinagh and Amazigh Latin characters, by extending the well-known EMNIST database with the Amazigh alphabet. And then, we have proposed a handwritten character recognition system, which is based on a deep convolutional neural network to validate the created datasets. The proposed CNN has been trained and tested on our created datasets, and the experimental tests show that it achieves satisfactory results in terms of accuracy and recognition efficiency.