Challenges in handwritten characters recognition lie in the variation and distortion of offline handwritten Devnagri characters since different people may use a different style of handwriting, and direction to draw the same shape of any Hindi character. This overview describes the nature of handwritten language, how it is translated into electronic data, handwritten Hindi character is imprecise in nature as their corners are not always sharp, lines are not perfectly straight, and curves are not necessarily smooth, unlikely the printed character. Furthermore, Hindi character can be drawn in different sizes and orientation in contrast to handwriting which is often assumed to be written on a baseline in an upright position. Therefore, a robust offline Hindi handwritten recognition system has to account for all of these factors.

The recognition of Devnagri characters is different from western handwriting recognition and poses a special challenge. The objective of this work is to develop a system which can recognize an offline handwritten Devnagri character.