SMARTQUILL

Lyndsay Williams of Microsoft Research s Cambridge UK lab is the inventor of the Smartquill, a pen that can remember the words that it is used to write, and then transform them into computer text. The prototype, called SmartQuil, 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. 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 our SmartQuill and tries to write with it- it won’t. Because user can train the pen to recognize a particular handwriting.

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. SmartQuill will let them skip the step of typing up their notes. The pen records the information inserted by the user. “Smart Quill” uses ink and writes on paper. A couple of built-in accelerometers record our hieroglyphics. Smart Quill is an electronic “inkwell” that delivers the jottings to our PC. The computer interprets the motion data as text.

Tagged as: Data research, Electronic pen, Prototype pen, Word writer