Project Description
The
Livescribe
Pulse Pen is a commercial smart pen device that includes a video camera
in its tip, a microprocessor that can run Java programs, memory, an audio speaker,
a microphone, and a rechargeable battery. As the pen is touched to
specially-printed paper, the camera “sees” a pattern of tiny dots (commercially
known as the Anoto pattern) that encodes page and pixel coordinate data, and
can deduce its position on a printed surface.
In the audio-haptic applications proposed here, the pen will speak the
identities of any feature of a raised-line graphic that has been touched by the
pen’s tip, and will permit complex interactivity with materials such as maps, curricula,
games and reference tools.
Users can
detect by touch not only raised surfaces but indentations such as channels,
dimples and punched holes, subtle features not discerned by the fingers
alone.
Users can first explore these
images with their hands; then they can tap the pen’s tip to any feature to
cause descriptive text to be played through the pen’s speaker or through
connected ear buds. By this means, vision impaired readers can access complex
pictorial material with good comprehension, and the raised-line graphic can
also become the basis of a graphical user interface, allowing authors and
artists to make highly interactive static images that communicate through
multiple sense channels.
Four applications:
- Periodic
Table. A complete reference tool on a single 11” x 17” page showing
the periodic table of the elements.
Tapping places on the surface with the pulse pen allows the user to
elicit several levels of audio information.
- Scientific
Calculator. A single-page application adapted from a calculator
program developed for Livescribe. This application gives us chance to
explore ways for embedding context-sensitive help features to simplify and
speed up the process of performing potentially complex operations that
require the user to press multiple keys in sequence.
- Sudoku
Game. This popular pastime
requires that users fill in grids of digits through trial and error,
drawing on logical reasoning and spatial memory skills. This application will provide insight into the development of multi-sensory presentation.
- Biology diagram of a motor neuron. This will allow the user to develop a
concept of a three-dimensional physical object and to elicit information
about it at several levels.
