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PhonePoint Pen: Using Mobile Phones to Write in Air. Sandip Agrawal, Ionut Constandache, Shravan Gaonkar, Romit Roy Choudhury. ACM MobiHeld 2009. Noting small pieces of information, quickly and effortlessly can be useful But aren’t there several solutions . Buy Milk. State of the Art.
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PhonePoint Pen: Using Mobile Phones to Write in Air Sandip Agrawal, Ionut Constandache, Shravan Gaonkar, Romit Roy Choudhury ACM MobiHeld 2009
Noting small pieces of information, quickly and effortlessly can be useful But aren’t there several solutions ... Buy Milk
State of the Art • Sticky notes … • Difficult to organize electronically • Not always handy • Typing on phone keyboards • Tiny keyboard sizes • Small inter-key spacing • Audio recording • Cannot sketch diagrams • Time consuming to browse through voice messages
So, need a solution that is • Easy to use • Always-with-me • Allows sketching • Online/Searchable
Proposed Approach: PhonePoint Pen • User holds phone like a pen • Writes messages in air • Built-in accelerometer • Captures hand movement • Converts to image / text • Display text on screen • Also sent to user’s email address
Use Cases • Mashing with cameras • Superimposing text on pictures Duke University • Sketching • Giving directions to your home • Exchanging figures on the fly • One handed use • E.g., carrying a suitcase
Use Cases • Applications in healthcare • Hand movement disabilities • Speech problems after surgery • Military and emergency response • Quick and silent updates
Prototype Current prototype on Nokia N95 Equipped with 3-axes accelerometer Programmed usign Python + MATLAB several design challenges emerge …
Design Challenges (1) • Hands rotate while writing • Accelerometers only measure linear acceleration • Rotation injects ambiguity (Wii uses gyroscope) • Proposed Approach: • Hold phone in non-rotating grip • Determine angular orientation during the pause
Design Challenges (2) • Background Vibration (Noise) • Sensitive accelerometers • Jitter from hand vibrations • Proposed Approach: • Smooth the accelerometer readings with moving average • Suppress acceleration values < threshold
Reset Design Challenges (3) • Computing Displacement • Ambiguity when acceleration is zero • Can be constant velocity or stationary • Worse with noise • Proposed Approach: • Detect change of direction • Reset velocity between strokes
Z-axis spikes Design Challenges (4) • Lifting Pen from the Paper • e.g., dotting the “i” and crossing the “t” • Proposed Approach: • Impulse on the Z axis during the lift • Off the Record – On the RecordP
Design Challenges (5) • Character transition • e.g., B vs 13 • Proposed Approach: • Use delimited such as “.” • 1.3 for 13
Drawing a Rectangle RawAccelerometer Reading
Noise Smoothing using Moving Average Background Noise Suppression Final Rectangle Velocity Plot after Avoiding Velocity Drifts
More PhonePen words … 20 words tested with online OCR web service. 78% accuracy
Of Course, Not a Product Yet • Need smaller hand movements in air • Youtube comment: looking crazy waving hands • Slashdot: Nearby people can get injured • Lowercase character recognition • Cursive handwriting more complicated • Need increased robustness • 20% failure when writing in air • 5% failure when writing on a surface
Of Course, Not a Product Yet • Erasing alphabets • Shake your hands like using a eraser • What about longer messages • Sentences? Email replies? Ongoing work is pursuing these directions …
The vision is: Swipe your credit card and sign in air …
Thanks • Visit Systems Networking Research Group (SyNRG) • @ Duke University • Google “synrg duke”
Thank You! email: romit@ee.duke.edu Web: http://synrg.ee.duke.edu/
Noting small pieces of information, quickly and effortlessly can be useful So, what are the options ... Call John @ 6658 Buy Milk Right on 3rd traffic light
Velocity Plot after Avoiding Velocity Drifts Final Rectangle