Write Messages in the Air with PhonePoint Pen

While noting down different stuff that you need to remember is not a hard thing to do at most times, there are certain situations when you just don't have the means or possibility to write something down, like those moments when you have your hands full of luggage and something pops up in your mind. Fortunately, engineering students at Duke University have come up with an idea that might save a lot of trouble in such scenarios.

These guys came up with an application that takes advantage of a mobile phone's accelerometer and allows users to write short notes into the air with their handset, after which it sends the message automatically to the email address of the user. Since accelerometers are always on the phone and track all the moves the device makes, it would be rather easy to use the application to “write” things you need to remember.

“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; together with Duke graduate student Ionut Constandache, he developed the PhonePoint Pen. “By holding the phone like a pen, you can write short messages or draw simple diagrams in the air.”

Agrawal, a Pratt Engineering Undergraduate Fellow, has been granted the inaugural Hoffman + Krippner Award for Excellence in Student Engineering for developing the PhonePoint Pen application. It allows for short messages to be written, or for simple drawings to be made, yet the system is expected to be able to handle more complex capabilities, says Romit Roy Choudhury, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, Agrawal's mentor.

“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.”

Roy Choudhury also stated that the idea is to get over the typing on a keyboard or the usage of a stylus as means of entering information into devices. The ability to write messages should appeal to a lot of people that are attracted by the age of Twitter and micro-blogs, he added. While the application requires at the moment for the letters to be written large and for pauses between them, future improvements should speed the writing process up. The PhonePoint Pen prototype will become available for download in the near future, as Roy Choudhury revealed.