25-08-2017, 09:32 PM
Abstracts: While most of the Indian industries are in the process of automation, it is a bitter fact that the Indian Postal System is still using manual intervention for its mail sorting and processing. In this project, we intend to propose an Automated Postal System which would reduce the mail sorting time besides ruling out human errors. The Automatic Mail Processor, which we have designed, scans a mail and interprets the imperative fields of the destination address such as the Pin Code, City name, Locality name and the Street name. The interpreted address is subsequently converted into a Delivery Point Code, which is a 12 digit number. The Delivery Point Code is printed on to the mail in the form of a barcode which can be read by a low-cost machine. By converting the destination address into a barcode (which is printed on the mail), all of the future sorting processes can be accomplished by using a mechanical machine sorter, that can sort the mails according to the barcode present on them. The AMP comprises of modules namely Pre-Processing Unit, Address Block Location Unit, Segmentation Unit, Character Recognition Unit, Address Parsing Unit, Delivery Point Code Generation Unit and Barcode Generation Unit. The Address Parser detects the location of the fields by using a heuristic procedure. The recognition system is accomplished by representing the characters in the form of chain codes, and by using their Fourier Descriptors for alphanumeric matching with the aid of a Neural Network. The Delivery Point Code is then generated by using the Pin Code (6 digits) and the Street Code. A database is used in this step to assign 5 digit codes for street names. The DPC is then bar-coded and printed on to the mail.