Multi-criteria handwriting quality analysis with online fuzzy models

IntuiScript is an innovative project aiming at the development of a digital workbook providing feedback during the handwriting learning process for children from three to seven years old. In this context, the paper presents a method to analyse handwriting quality that responds to the expectations of the IntuiScript educational scenario: on-line and real time feedback for children, an automatic detection of children mistakes guiding the pedagogical progression, and a precise analysis of children writing saved to help teacher to understand children writing skills. The presented method introduces a multi-criteria architecture to analyse handwriting quality based on three different aspects: shape, order and direction. The validation of the proposed approach is done on a realistic dataset collected in preschools and primary schools with 952 children. Results show a positive feedback of children and teachers about the use of tactile digital devices, and a significant improvement of the performances of the multi-criteria architecture compared to the previous analyser. The ground truth has been annotated by experts with different levels of confidence. Specific evaluation metrics are introduced to deal with confidence annotations.