A new approach to the electronic pen idea

Abstract

The pen is a very useful, comfortable, quick and portable output device. Even in a world with Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and laptops in abundance, many people still prefer pens for situations like taking notes in a lecture or a business meeting or for sketching an idea. A pen product has been developed that takes writing and produces voltages related to the direction vectors of the writing. The idea to use direction vectors to produce ASCII characters through handwriting recognition is unique. Though it seems like a complex problem, there are few ambiguities in the direction vectors used to write letters. Additionally many of the ambiguities of similar-looking letters would not exist because the strokes used to write them are different. Tests show that the X- and Y- coordinates of the outputs are uncoupled when forces are applied while the pen is held vertical and stationary but somewhat coupled while one is writing. Preliminary tests also show that the voltage plots can distinguish between the lines in a box, a horizontal line and a diagonal line, the two lines in an X, and the letters U and V.