Tuesday, June 9,
2009
It's a familiar scene in airports and train stations. Hands full
with luggage, briefcase, laptop or coat and there's something you
need to remember, like the level and row numbers where you parked
your car in the deck. What do you do?
Instead of relying on your memory, or finding a place to put all
your stuff down to find a pen and paper, wouldn't it be so
convenient to simply write "level 4, row H" in the air and be able
to retrieve it later?
Engineering students at Duke University have taken advantage of the
accelerometers in emerging cell phones to create an application
that permits users to write short notes in the air with their
phone, and have that message automatically sent to an e-mail
address.
Accelerometers are the devices in phones that not only keep track
of the phone's movements, but make it possible for the display
screens to rotate from landscape to portrait modes depending on how
the phone is rotated. These devices are always "on," so there is no
additional burden on the phone to use this new application.
"We developed an application that uses the built-in accelerometers
in cell phones to recognize human writing," said Sandip Agrawal,
electrical and computer engineering senior at Duke's Pratt School
of Engineering, who with Duke graduate student Ionut Constandache
developed the PhonePoint Pen. "By holding the phone like a pen, you
can write short messages or draw simple diagrams in the air.
"The accelerometer converts the gestures to images, which can be
sent to any e-mail address for future reference," Constandache
said. "Also, say you're in a class and there is an interesting
slide on the screen. We foresee being able to take a photo of the
slide and write a quick note on it for future reference. The
potential uses are practically limitless. That this prototype works
validates the feasibility of such a pen."
Agrawal, a Pratt Engineering Undergraduate Fellow, received the
inaugural Hoffman + Krippner Award for Excellence in Student
Engineering for the development of the PhonePoint Pen application.
The award, created by the German technology firm Hoffman +
Krippner, was presented Tuesday, June 9 during the 2009 Sensors
Expo and Conference in Chicago.
While this first generation application permits the writing of
short messages or simple drawings, it is only a matter of time
before this prototype system will be able to handle larger and more
complex air-writing capabilities, according to Agrawal's mentor,
Romit Roy Choudhury, assistant professor of electrical and computer
engineering.
"One of the efforts of our group (http://synrg.ee.duke.edu/microblog.html)
is to take a fresh look at how people get their information into
the Internet," Roy Choudhury said. "We're trying to get past the
whole idea of typing on a keyboard or using a stylus to enter
information into devices. Many people get discouraged with current
phones and their small keys. As phones get smaller, this
frustration will only grow.
"And today, especially now in the age of Twitter and micro-blogs,
the speed in which you send information becomes more important,"
Roy Choudhury said. "To be able to write quickly using only one
hand would be very attractive to many people."
Although challenges still remain to broaden the capabilities of the
PhonePoint Pen, the engineers are confident they can be solved.
Currently, air-writers must pause briefly between letters, which
can slow the process down and rules out the use of cursive writing.
Also, each letter must be written large. These improvements would
come as a result of improved algorithms and more sophisticated
accelerometers, the scientists said.
"It is only a matter of time before we improve the performance of
this application," Agrawal said. "We plan to further augment the
pen with real-time feedback, character recognition and better
support for drawing diagrams."
Roy Choudhury expects that the PhonePoint Pen prototype will be
available for download within the next few months.
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Duke University
Thanks to Duke University for this
article.