Rotation-invariant neural pattern recognition system estimating a rotation angle

A rotation-invariant neural pattern recognition system, which can recognize a rotated pattern and estimate its rotation angle, is considered. It is well-known that humans sometimes recognize a rotated form by means of mental rotation. The occurrence of mental rotation can be explained in terms of the theory of information types. Therefore, we first examine the applicability of the theory to a rotation-invariant neural pattern recognition system. Next, we present a rotation-invariant neural network which can estimate a rotation angle. The neural network consists of a preprocessing network to detect the edge features of input patterns and a trainable multilayered network. Furthermore, a rotation-invariant neural pattern recognition system which includes the rotation-invariant neural network is proposed. This system is constructed on the basis of the above-mentioned theory. Finally, it is shown that, by means of computer simulations of a binary pattern and a coin recognition problem, the system is able to recognize rotated patterns and estimate their rotation angle.