IIT Jodhpur Develops AI System to Unlock Blurred Historical Manuscripts

The team of researchers, led by Dr. Dinesh Mohan Joshi, Assistant Professor at IIT Jodhpur, is innovating by combining AI, computational linguistics, and the Indian knowledge tradition. The main objective is to develop techniques to read and understand historical texts whose characters have not been legible due to smudged ink, torn pages, and incomplete handwriting. Advertising India's manuscript heritage contains vast knowledge of subjects such as astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, medicine, literature, metallurgy, and architecture. However, the blurred letters, blotches, and complex handwriting structures in these manuscripts present a major challenge to researchers. Traditional Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology is also not able to read and understand such historical manuscripts properly. The team at IIT Jodhpur is developing a special AI system to find a solution to this problem. The system will not only digitally alter the manuscripts, but also help researchers to understand the original content, quality, and linguistic structure of ancient manuscripts during the entire translation process.