Neural networks are now used in many commercial products:
- most OCR programs, such as the ones that now come free with your scanners, use neural networks for at least some of the steps to recognize characters. See, for example, Caere OmniPage and Ligature, which uses them in its "ocr-on-a-chip" that goes into its handheld "Quicktionary" pen.
- data mining programs used NNW's to analyse transactions for unusual patterns, e.g. credit card fraud. This is now a big time business. See, for example, HNC Software, co-founded by Robert Hecht-Nielson, a famous NNW guru at Univ. of San Diego.
- Sensory Inc. uses them in its voice recognition chips. They've sold millions of such chips, which recognize just a few words but with speaker independence, high background noise, and for low cost. See the recent article at EE Times: "Toys that talk..."
- Synaptics , co-founded by Carver Mead, uses analog hardware neural network techniques in its Touchpad that is used in many notebooks.
Have I convinced you yet? Most of these applications are at the infrastructure level and don't get much PR, often for proprietary reasons. Calera for example, was using NNW's in its OCR already in the late 80's but didn't say anything about them until Caere started bragging in ads in 1992 that it was using NNW's.
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What about the Chinese Transrapid maglev (built by a German company) now running on a 30km track between downtown Shanghai and its airport.
products:
- most OCR programs, such as the ones that now come free with your scanners,
use neural networks for at least some of the steps to recognize
characters. See, for example, Caere OmniPage and Ligature,
which uses them in its "ocr-on-a-chip" that goes into its
handheld "Quicktionary" pen.
- data mining programs used NNW's to analyse
transactions for unusual patterns, e.g. credit card fraud. This is
now a big time business. See, for example, HNC Software, co-founded
by Robert Hecht-Nielson, a famous NNW guru at Univ. of San Diego.
- Sensory Inc. uses them in its voice recognition chips.
They've sold millions of such chips, which recognize just a few words
but with speaker independence, high background noise, and for low cost.
See the recent article at EE Times: "Toys that talk..."
- Synaptics , co-founded by Carver Mead, uses analog hardware
neural network techniques in its Touchpad that is used in many notebooks.
Have I convinced you yet? Most of these applications are at the
infrastructure level and don't get much PR, often for proprietary
reasons. Calera for example, was using NNW's in its OCR already
in the late 80's but didn't say anything about them until Caere started
bragging in ads in 1992 that it was using NNW's.