Apple patents smart pen for capturing digital copies of handwritten notes

The patent comes in the form of a smart pen capable of detecting hand movements for translation into digital line drawings and text.

Apple has been granted Patent No. 8,922,530 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the design of a “Communicating stylus” which is about a smart writing utensil which makes use of accelerometers, wireless communication hardware and onboard storage. Putting all this together, it gets the ability to transfer hand-written notes and drawings onto the display of a digital device. This is not the first time this concept is being tried out; there are a number of companies out there which have tried and tested this formula before as well and out of these, Livescribe‘s “smartpen was the more relevant one.

However, all of these pens designed before don’t match the advanced technology set forth by Apple’s design. For instance, the Livescribe 3 makes use of an infrared camera which is located in the tip of the pen and captures the handwriting which is then stored onboard or offloaded via Bluetooth. A special kind of paper is required for this process to take place along with a relatively large chassis and a copious amount of power.

Apple’s stylus is going to be loaded with some powerful and efficient accelerometers or other motion-sensing hardware and the pen is activated only when someone picks it up, presses the nib against the paper or manually turns it on himself. After this, the onboard sensors come to action and track the position changes in relation to an initial zero point. This allows real time data to be sent through the device on to the screen of an iOS device for translation and graphical representation.

source: uspto