SEMINAR ’10 SMART QUILL

CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION………………..………………….……….2
2. WORKING OF SMARTQUILL…………………….….….4
3. TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION………………………….6
3.1 DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY…………………………….6
3.2 HANDWRITING RECOGNITION AND SIGNATURE
VERIFICATION………........…..…….…………..………....6
3.3 DISPLAY SCROLLS BY TILTING SCREEN……......17
3.4 COMMUNICATION WITH OTHER DEVICES…......18
3.5 MEMORY..…..…..……...……………………………..19
3.6 POWER…………….…………………………………..19

4. APPLICATIONS…………………………………………...20
5. ADVANTAGES & DISADVANTAGES………………...21
6. CONCLUSION….…………………………………...........23

LIST OF FIGURES

I. SMART QUILL (2.1)…………………………………………5

II. DIAGRAM OF DIFFERENTIAL CAPACITIVE
LAYOUT (3.1)………….…………………………………….9
III. PROTOTYPE OF SMART QUILL (3.2)………………….11
IV. TRANSCRIPTION RESULTS (3.3 & 3.4)……………….13
V. YANI’S SIGNATURE RESULT (3.5 & 3.6)………….….16
VI. LCD DISPLAY (3.7)..….….……………..…………………17

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1. INTRODUCTION

Lyndsay Williams of Microsoft Research's Cambridge UK lab is the inventor of

the Smart quill, a pen that can remember the words that it is used to write, and
then transform them into computer text. The idea that "it would be neat to put all
of a handheld-PDA type computer in a pen," came to the inventor in her sleep.
“It’s the pen for the new millennium,” she says. Encouraged by Nigel Ballard, a
leading consultant to the mobile computer industry, Williams took her prototype
to the British Telecommunications Research Lab, where she was promptly hired
and given money and institutional support for her project. The prototype, called
Smart Quill, has been developed by world-leading research laboratories run by BT
(formerly British Telecom) at Martlesham, eastern England. It is claimed to be the
biggest revolution in handwriting since the invention of the pen.

The sleek and stylish prototype pen is different from other electronic pens on the
market today in that users don't have to write on a special pad in order to record
what they write. User could use any surface for writing such as paper, tablet,
screen or even air. The Smart Quill isn't all space-age, though -- it contains an ink
cartridge so that users can see what they write down on paper. Smart Quill
contains sensors that record movement by using the earth's gravity system,
irrespective of the platform used. The pen records the information inserted by the
user. Your words of wisdom can also be uploaded to your PC through the “digital
inkwell”, while the files that you might want to view on the pen are downloaded
to Smart Quill as well.

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It is an interesting idea, and it even comes with one attribute that makes entire
history of pens pale by comparison—if someone else picks your Smart Quill and
tries to write with it- it won’t. Because user can train the pen to recognize a
particular handwriting. Hence Smart Quill recognizes only the owner’s
handwriting. Smart Quill is a computer housed within a pen which allows you to
do what a normal personal organizer doe’s .It’s really mobile because of its
smaller size and one handed use. People could use the pen in the office to replace
a keyboard, but the main attraction will be for users who usually take notes by
hand on the road and type them up when returning to the office. Smart Quill will
let them skip the step of typing up their notes.

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2. WORKING OF SMARTQUILL

Smart Quill is slightly larger than an ordinary fountain pen. Users can enter
information into these applications by pushing a button on the pen and writing
down what they would like to enter .The Smart Quill does not need a screen to
work. The really clever bit of the technology is its ability to read handwriting not
only on paper but on any flat surface – horizontal or vertical. There is also a small
four-line screen to read the information stored in the pen; users can scroll down
the screen by tilting the pen slightly. The user trains the pen to recognize a
particular handwriting style - no matter how messy it is, as long as it is consistent,
the pen can recognize it. The handwritten notes are stored on hard disk of the pen.
The pen is then plugged into an electronic "inkwell", text data is transmitted to a
desktop computer, printer, or modem or to a mobile telephone to send files
electronically. Up to 10 pages of notes can be stored locally on the pen. A tiny
light at the tip allows writing in the dark. When the pen is kept idle for some time,
power gets automatically off.

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SMARTQUILL:

FIG 2.1

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3. TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION

FEATURES:
I. Display technology used in Smart Quill.
II. Handwriting recognition and signature verification.
III. Display scrolls using tilt sensors.
IV. Communication with other devices.
V. Memory and power.

3.1 DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY:

Technology used in Smart Quill for display is Kopin Corp’s Cyber Display
technology. Cyber Display is a ¼ inch diagonal LCD that uses circuitry built on a
silicon wafer, then removed and mounted to glass. The displays are integrated to
miniature monitors using its own backlighting, optics, ICs and packaging.

3.2 HANDWRITING RECOGNITION AND SIGNATURE

VERIFICATION:
I. Accelerometers measure hand movement in 2 or 3 planes.
II. On board DSP converts to ASCII characters for pen applications.
III. Write on paper, flat surface, vertical wall or in air.
IV. Single character recognition on pen.
V. Record cursive letters and download to PC for decoding.
VI. Password by signature recognition.

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Smart Quill works by measuring the pen's movements and matching them to the
movements that produce letters and words programmed into its memory. It's
similar to the way a microphone detects sound. Consistency of handwriting, rather
than neatness, is the only condition for accuracy.
There are 2 techniques used for this purpose:-
1. Accelerometer technology
2. Handwriting recognition
software

ACCELEROMETER TECHNOLOGY:
This technology uses a device called Accelerometer which is used for measuring
motion. A tiny accelerometer in a pen could be used to detect the stops and starts,
arcs and loops of handwriting, and transmit this information to a small
microprocessor that would make sense of it as text. There's also the possibility of
viewing a full page of text through a special monocular magnified "virtual" screen
that could be built into the end of the pen. Invisible writing in air is achieved
through this unique technology called accelerometer that monitors hand
movements and can also be used as a ‘virtual hinge’ to scroll around the small
screen on the pen and detect left or right-handed use. It records movement by
using the earth's gravity system, whether you write on paper or in the air. Hence it
is independent of surface used. Movements are stored within the Smart Quill. This
information is transmitted on to a small microprocessor that would make sense of
it as a text displayed on the sleek built in screen.

There are 2 types of accelerometer:

I. Two Axes Accelerometer: - This accelerometer measures acceleration in
two axes. An example for Two Axes Accelerometer is ADXL202
Accelerometer.
II. Three Axes Accelerator: - This accelerometer measures acceleration in
three axes. An example for Three Axes Accelerometer is Tronics ± 2g
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accelerometer.

ACCELEROMETER SENSOR:
Accelerometer sensor measures the acceleration experienced by the sensor and
anything to which, the sensor is directly attached. Accelerometer sensors have
many applications.

When working with the accelerometer in the earth’s gravitational field, there is
always acceleration due to gravity. Thus the signal from an accelerometer sensor
can be separated into two signals: acceleration due to gravity and external
acceleration. Acceleration from gravity allows measurement of the tilt of the sensor
by identifying which direction is down. By filtering out the external acceleration
the orientation of a 3-axis sensor can be calculated from the acceleration on the
three-accelerometer axis orientation sensing can vary in navigation.

The goal of the sensor is to measure the 3d acceleration of the human hand motion
with adequate accuracy and precision, necessary bandwidth for normal human
motion and the amplitude range for the highest normal acceleration.

At the same time the physical presence of the sensor should not alter hand motion.
The application of measuring something sensitive to external mass like the human
hand requires the accelerometer sensor to be extremely small and light weight.

By measuring the acceleration of the pen, as the user writes the text, the pen
decodes the acceleration into words and sends the signal into the computer. Such a

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computerized pen is more convenient and portable than a digitalized tablet, which
measures the location of the tip of a pen on a pad.

BASIC THEORY OF OPERATION:

Accelerometer sensors convert either linear or angular acceleration to an output
signal.

Accelerometer sensor use Newton’s second law of motion

F = m.a

By measuring the force from acceleration on an object whose mass is known. There
are many ways to measure the force exerted on the mass, called a proof mass but
the most common method used in accelerometer sensors is measuring the
displacement of the mass when it is suspended by springs.

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FIG 3.1

Forces acting on the proof mass include force from external acceleration, the force
from damping (proportional to velocity) and the restorative force of the spring
(proportional to position).

In Accelerometer, sensors operating far from the resonant frequency of the mass
spring system, the effect of damping can be largely ignored. Some high precision
accelerometer sensors operate near the resonant frequency to mechanically amplify
the displacement from acceleration.

For sufficiently small displacements, the spring constant K(x) can be assumed to

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be a constant. In equilibrium when the mass is not moving, the restorative force
exerted by the spring is equal to the force from acceleration on the proof mass. The
displacement of the spring, x, can be converted into an electrical signal by a variety
of methods.

PROTOTYPE OF SMART QUILL:

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FIG 3.2

This Smart Quill prototype records writing on paper for radio transmission to a
pocket pc, desktop, cell phone or tablet computer. The accelerometer tracks the
angular movement of the top of the pen at an angle in the air and these angles
plotted as x/y position on pc screen.

An early hardware prototype picture shows, left to right tilt sensor, PIC 8 bit
microcontroller, batteries, and 433Mhz 1200 Baud radio transmitter. Currently a
radio receiver on the RS232 port of a pc records the pen movement for

analysis via PC. The pen will power down after a period of no movement so
doesn't need an on/off switch. The battery life is approximately 25 hours.

HANDWRITING RECOGNITION SOFTWARE:

This software embedded in the microprocessor of the pen is used to recognize
handwriting of the user. Pen works in conjunction with a regular PC on to which
users install special handwriting recognition software. The handwriting
recognition software translates movements in to text on screen.

Handwriting recognition software constitutes two major phases:

I. Handwriting transcription.
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II. Handwriting recognition.

Handwriting Transcription:
In this phase, the recorded acceleration signals are then transcripted to its original
form. Here this aspect is solved using ‘simple’ double integration method in order
to retrace the pen tip movement on paper.

Method:
In order for this principle to work properly, we have to solve two main problems:

I. Firstly, we have to know pen’s spatial orientation in order to withdraw the

earth gravity component to the measured accelerations.

II. Secondly, we have to succeed in the double integration, which is to solve

all the derivation problems due to this method.

Fig 3.3 represents the acceleration signals recorded while one is writing a
small capital B.
Fig 3.4 is the transcription result obtained with algorithm presented.

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FIG 3.3

FIG 3.4
Handwriting Recognition:
The second huge aspect is the characters and signatures recognition. The hardware
(accelerometers plus contact detector) embedded in the pen has proved a really
efficient combination for this application.

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Method:
The same method is used to recognize the characters written by a single user and
to find whose signature is the one that has just been done.

We use a simple Euclidian distance as the comparison process, and of course the
decision process is the smaller distance found.

The first step -1- consists in creating the reference database for the characters as
for the signatures. For this a mean signal is computed for each recorded symbol.

The second step is the recognition process

I. For the creation of database, each symbol was reproduced several times
and a mean normalized symbol was computed.

II. For recognition process, the unknown symbol is first normalized, the
distance between this symbol and the entire database symbol is computed.
Then the unknown symbol is recognized as the one with the lowest
distance.

PROTOCOL:
The results shown in this part are for signature recognition but they are similar as
the one obtained for character recognition.

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The corpus used for signatures was made by 10 different signatures from 10
different people. They made 10 attempts for the database, and 5 others for the test
base.

In Fig 3.5, we can see the accelerometers signals recorded during Yani’s signing
process. Fig 3.6 shows the distances computed between the unknown signature
and the ones in the database. Yani’s signature was the last one learnt (number 10)
and we clearly see in Fig 9 that his signature was well recognized.

FIG 3.5

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FIG 3.6

In Fig 3.6, the X-axis represents the different symbols of the database, and the Y-
axis is the distance from the unknown new symbol to the one’s from the database.

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3.3 DISPLAY SCROLLS BY TILTING SCREEN

By tilting the pen, user can choose applications and scroll through without using
scroll buttons. Below is an image of Smart Quill tilting Screen designed by
Lyndsay Williams for BT Labs in 1997. The pen would align text if it was held in
left or right hand so the text was the correct way up for left or right handed
people. This was done by using Micro Electromechanical Systems (MEMS) tilt
sensors to measure tilt angle to earth. The Smart Quill microcontroller read the
angle and then mapped the large screen display onto the small 4 line display.
Smart Quill could also scroll through pages of display by tilting it in the hand and
power off if no hand movement was detected or pen was flat on a desk. The
demonstration unit below shows display inverting as Smart Quill was inverted in
the hand. The choice of words was limited to what characters the LCD display
driver could show while upside down (left hand picture) – only 14 of the 26 letters
of the alphabet were usable. These 14 characters were then processed by anagram
software to produce 900 words that used these characters. The shopping list below
was produced from this limited dictionary to demonstrate the text inversion.

FIG 3.7

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3.4 COMMUNICATION WITH OTHER DEVICES

Earlier Smart Quill models developed by BT laboratories communicated with the
PC via a radio transmitter, but the current prototype hooks up to a PC via a cable
and electronic docking station called an "inkwell." .The data stored in the memory
is uploaded to the personal computer when it is placed in to a docking station. An
electronic docking station is a small cabinet to which a laptop or notebook
computer can be attached for use as a desktop computer, usually have a connector
for externally connected devices, such as hard drives or scanners and ports that
can be linked to components such as keyboard, monitor and printer. It can also be
connected to printer, modem or mobile phones to send data electronically.

The output accelerometer signals from the pen are digitized with a National
Instrument capture card with a frequency Fe of 1000Hz and a low pass filter at
Fc=1/3*Fe .

Future models could receive e-mails and pager messages via a wireless messaging
system .This enables two-way wireless communication with other computing
devices.

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3.5 MEMORY:
Smart Quill has 4MB EEPROM memory. At a time, up to 10 pages of notes can
be stored locally on the pen. The data is stored in the memory on the pen until it is
uploaded to the personal computer. Smart Quill works by measuring the pen's
movements and matching them to the movements that produce letters and words
programmed into its memory. It's similar to the way a microphone detects sound.

3.6 POWER:
Smart Quill is powered by AAA battery. It will run for about 25hrs on a single
AAA battery. The pen exhibits automatic power on/off system. The pen will
power down after a period of no movement. So it supports automatic on/off
system.

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3. APPLICATIONS

I. Smart Quill isn’t all space-age. It contains an ink cartridge so that users can
see what they write on paper .Hence a simple application of Smart Quill is that
it writes notes on paper. This information recorded in the pen is then
downloaded to PC.

II. The information stored in the pen can be input to other devices such as
mobile phones, printers, modems, desktop computers etc for different
applications.

III. It also provides handheld computer applications such as digital diary,

contacts, calculators etc.

IV. It is used for receiving pager and e-mail messages. This is possible through
recent technology involved in Smart Quill, the wireless messaging system
which allows two way communication between devices.

V. Smart Quill synchronizes files, e-mails and messages to PC.

VI. Smart Quill can be used for voice record and supports speech recognition.
Voice record is made possible through ADPCM speech compression.

VII. Smart Quill also allows third party to add on applications.

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5. ADVANTAGES
I. One of the major assets is that Smart Quill does not need a screen to work.
This is possible through revolutionary "Spatial Sensing" system which uses
semiconductor accelerometers. Accelerometers senses pen/hand movement instead
of shapes.

II. Smart Quill provides intuitive user interface.

III. Security – Security is another important feature. It is made possible through

two facilities:
a. It enables handwriting recognition .User can train the pen to recognize
a particular handwriting style. The symbols regularly used by user get stored in the
memory, by frequent use of the pen. Hence the pen accepts only the owner’s
handwriting and rejects intruder’s handwriting.
b. It enables signature verification. Hence Passwords could be entered in
the form of signatures.

IV. The Smart Quill is also a 3D-mouse, when twisted in air in a certain way it
enables scrolling of the screen. It also automatically detects left or right handed use.

V. Power saving
a. Small screen size requires less battery power.
b. No movement of the pen causes auto power down

VI. Smart Quill is all mobile, smaller in size and enables one-handed use.

DISADVANTAGES

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I. It has accelerometer errors.

II. It is inconvenient for persons with hand tremulous.
III. Bigger size than a normal pen.
IV. Errors are introduced in the system due to thermal variations in the
spring.

6. CONCLUSION:
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The future of Smart Quill ensures all computation power the user needs right
inside the pen. Reducing the size of handheld computers can only be taken so far
before they become unusable. Keyboards become so tiny you require needle-like
fingers to operate them and screen that need constant cursor controls to read
simple text. The introduction of Smart Quill is the best solution for this problem.

Smart quill will be a boon to the users writing in traditional languages. It gives an
option for typing and for variety of applications. The day may come when we
loose our distinctions between the devices we use to interact with our computer
and the computer themselves.

BIBILOGRAPHY

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• E.Millien, C.Roux, “Users input to design of a “communicating pen”,Smart

Objects Conference,2003

• R.Baron, R. Plamondon, “Acceleration measurement with an instrumented

for sign verification and analysis”,IEEE Trans.Vol IM-38

• B.Milner, “Handwriting Recognition using acceleration based motion

detection”,IEEE ref.1999/041,1999

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