Udupi: Ancient stone inscriptions or epigraphs are important sources of information for historians, as they give an insight about history. In this direction, the students of final-year electronics and communication engineering at Shri Madhwa Vadiraja Institute of Technology, Bantakal, have developed a unique system for optical character recognition and period prediction of ancient Kannada epigraphs using digital image processing techniques.The system takes images of ancient Kannada epigraphs as input and converts them into a document file of characters in current Kannada script. It also predicts the era of inscriptions belonging to different periods, such as Brahmi to Chalukya. Students Sridevi, Sowjanya, Shrikari Bhagawat and Sameeksha Acharya developed the system with guidance from assistant professor Sachin Bhat.Sridevi said, "Our main intention is to convert epigraphy to readable and storable document files. We chose this project so that we can convert old Kannada scripts carved on stone pillars to currently used font. This helps familiarize people with the old Kannada script, which is being forgotten these days.""It's a good tool for research scholars to identify and recognize the era of stone inscriptions. It also helps revive the ancient Kannada literature. It is easy to use and takes much less time compared to manual method," she said.She said they had to build a small handwriting database themselves as it is not available. They now plan to enhance the database for more precise results."We also plan to make a mobile application. The use of smart devices have helped archaeological groups to solve problems on-site," she added.