Use of MATLAB neural networks toolbox in a character recognition problem

We present the use of the MATLAB Neural Network Toolbox (NN Toolbox) in simulations of neural networks. We suggest ways for undergraduate students to solve a character recognition problem with feed-forward neural networks. The software provides the user with a very simple way to define several neural network architectures with different parameters, The solution of the character recognition problem is described from the beginning: collecting the data, data encoding, defining the input-output mapping architecture to the training, and testing the neural networks with the NN Toolbox. (c) 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.