A Technical Seminar Report

on

“XXXXXXXXXXX”
A technical seminar submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of
degree of
BACHELOR OF TECHNOLOGY

IN

ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING

Submitted by

Name: XXXXXXX
H.T. No: XXXXXXXX
Branch: ECE
Year: 2019-2023

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING

JYOTHISHMATHI INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY & SCIENCE

(Approved by AICTE-New Delhi, Accredited with A Grade by NAAC, Affiliated to
JNTU-Hyderabad)
Nustulapur, Karimnagar-505481
2019 -2023

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 CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that seminar work entitled “XXXXXXXXXXXXX” is a bonafide work

carried out in the seventh semester by XXXXXXXX(19271A04XX), in the partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of BACHELOR OF TECHNOLOGY in ELECTRONICS AND

COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING during the academic year 2019-2023 under our guidance

and supervision.

Seminar Coordinator Head of the Department

Mr. B.RAJU Dr. N.UMAPATHI

Assistant Professor Professor

Department of ECE Department of ECE

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

 I take this opportunity to express my hearty thanks to all those who individually as well as
collectively helped me in the successful completion of this seminar.

I would like to express my immense gratitude and sincere thanks to our Coordinator
Mr.B.RAJU, whose co- operative guidance has helped me in successful completion of this
seminar.

SUBMITTED BY:

Name: XXXXXXXX
H.T. No: 19271A04XX
Branch: ECE

3
 CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE NO.

ABSTRACT 6

CHAPTER 1

1.1Introduction 6-8

CHAPTER 2

HISTORY OF SMART QUILL 9

2.1 what is smart quill

CHAPTER 3

3.1 Architecture of smart quill 10

CHAPTER 4

4.1 working of smart quill 11

CHAPTER 5

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION

5.1 Display Technology 12

5.2 Handwriting recognition and signature software 12-17
5.3 Display scrolls by tilting screen 18
5.4 Communication with another device 19
5.5 Memory 19
5.6 Power 19

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CHAPTER 6

6.1 Applications of smart quill 20

CHAPTER 7

7.1 Advantages of smart quill 21

7.2 Disadvantages of smart quill 21

CHAPTER 8

CONCLUSION 22

REFERENCES 23

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 ABSTRACT

With the introduction of handheld computers, the present trend has started preferring

smallcomputers to do computation. This has made computer manufacturers to go for almost

gadget like computers. Reducing the size of handheld computers can only be taken so far

before they become unusable. Keyboards become so tiny you require needle-like fingers to

operate them and screens that need constant cursor controls to read simple text.

The introduction of Smart Quill has solved some of these problems. Lyndsay Williams

of Microsoft, UK is the inventor of Smart Quill, a pen that can remember the words that is

used to write, and then transform them into computer text. The pen is slightly larger than

ordinary fountain pen, with a screen on the barrel. User can enter information into these

applications by pushing a button.Information can be entered using his/her own handwriting.

User can use any platform for writing like paper, screen, tablet or even air. There is also a

small three-line screen to read the information stored in the pen. Users can scroll down the

screen by tilting the pen. The pen is then plugged in to an electronic docking station, text data

is transmitted to a desktop computer, printer, modem or to a mobile telephone to send files

electronically.

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 CHAPTER-1

INTRODUCTION

Lyndsay Williams of Microsoft Research's Cambridge UK lab is the inventor of the

Smart quill, a pen that can remember the words that it is used to write, and then
transform them into computer text. The idea that "it would be neat to put all of a
handheld-PDA type computer in a pen," came to the inventor in her sleep. “It’s the pen
for the new millennium,” she says. Encouraged by Nigel Ballard, a leading consultant to
the mobile computer industry, Williams took her prototype to the British
Telecommunications Research Lab, where she was promptly hired and given money and
institutional support for her project. The prototype, called Smart Quill, 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 those users don't have to write on a special pad in order to record
what they write. User could use any surface for writing such as paper, tablet, screen or
even air. The Smart Quill isn't all space-age, though -- it contains an ink cartridge so that
users can see what they write down on paper. Smart Quill contains sensors that record
movement by using the earth's gravity system, irrespective of the platform used. The pen
records the information inserted by the user. Your words of wisdom can also be
uploaded to your PC through the “digital inkwell”, while the files that you might want to
view on the pen are downloaded to Smart Quill as well.

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 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 your Smart Quill and tries to write
with it- it won’t. Because user can train the pen to recognize a particular handwriting.
Hence Smart Quill recognizes only the owner’s handwriting. Smart Quill is a computer
housed within a pen which allows you to do what a normal personal organizer doe’s .It’s
mobile because of its smaller size and one-handed use. 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. Smart Quill
will let them skip the step of typing up their notes.

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 CHAPTER-2

HISTORY OF SMART QUILL

• Lyndsay Williams of Microsoft Research's Cambridge UK lab is the inventor of the

Smart quill, a pen that can remember the words that it is used to write, and then
transform them into computer text.
• The idea that "it would be neat to put all of a handheld-PDA type computer in a pen,"
came to the inventor in her sleep.
• Smart Quill, has been developed by research laboratories run by British Telecom at
Martlesham, England
• User can use any platform for writing like paper, screen or even air.

2.1 WHAT IS SMART QUILL

 Is a pen that can remember the words that is used to write, and then transform
them into computer text.

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10
 CHAPTER-3

ARCHITECTURE OF SMART QUILL

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 CHAPTER-4

WORKING OF SMART QUILL

Smart Quill is slightly larger than an ordinary fountain pen. Users can enter information
into these applications by pushing a button on the pen and writing down what they
would like to enter. The Smart Quill does not need a screen to work. The really clever
bit of the technology is its ability to read handwriting not only on paper but on any flat
surface – horizontal or vertical. There is also a small four-line screen to read the
information stored in the pen; users can scroll down the screen by tilting the pen
slightly. The user trains the pen to recognize a particular handwriting style - no matter
how messy it is, as long as it is consistent, the pen can recognize it. The handwritten
notes are stored on hard disk of the pen. The pen is then plugged into an electronic
"inkwell", text data is transmitted to a desktop computer, printer, or modem or to a
mobile telephone to send files electronically. Up to 10 pages of notes can be stored
locally on the pen. A tiny light at the tip allows writing in the dark. When the pen is kept
idle for some time, power gets automatically off.

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 CHAPTER-5

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION

5.1 DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY:

Technology used in Smart Quill for display is Kop in Corp’s Cyber Display technology.
Cyber Display is a ¼ inch diagonal LCD that uses circuitry built on a silicon wafer, then
removed and mounted to glass. The displays are integrated to miniature monitors using
its own backlighting, optics, ICs and packaging.

5.2 HANDWRITING RECOGNITION AND SIGNATURE

VERIFICATION:
I. Accelerometers measure hand movement in 2 or 3 planes.
II. On board DSP converts to ASCII characters for pen applications.
III. Write on paper, flat surface, vertical wall or in air.
IV. Single character recognition on pen.
V. Record cursive letters and download to PC for decoding.
VI. Password by signature recognition.

Smart Quill works by measuring the pen's movements and matching them to the
movements that produce letters and words programmed into its memory. It's similar to
the way a microphone detects sound. Consistency of handwriting, rather than neatness,
is the only condition for accuracy.
There are 2 techniques used for this purpose
1.Accelerometer technology
2.Handwriting recognition software

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 1.ACCELEROMETER TECHONOLOGY

This technology uses a device called Accelerometer which is used for measuring
motion. A tiny accelerometer in a pen could be used to detect the stops and starts, arcs
and loops of handwriting, and transmit this information to a small microprocessor that
would make sense of it as text. There's also the possibility of viewing a full page of text
through a special monocular magnified "virtual" screen that could be built into the end
of the pen. Invisible writing in air is achieved through this unique technology called
accelerometer that monitors hand movements and can also be used as a ‘virtual hinge’ to
scroll around the small screen on the pen and detect left or right-handed use. It records
movement by using the earth's gravity system, whether you write on paper or in the air.
Hence it is independent of surface used. Movements are stored within the Smart Quill.
This information is transmitted on to a small microprocessor that would make sense of it
as a text displayed on the sleek built-in screen.

There are 2 types of accelerometers:

I. Two Axes Accelerometer: - This accelerometer measures acceleration in two axes.
An example for Two Axes Accelerometer is ADXL202 Accelerometer.
II. Three Axes Accelerator: - This accelerometer measures acceleration in three axes.
An example for Three Axes Accelerometer is Tronics ± 2g
accelerometer.

ACCELEROMETER SENSOR:
Accelerometer sensor measures the acceleration experienced by the sensor and anything
to which, the sensor is directly attached. Accelerometer sensors have many applications.

When working with the accelerometer in the earth’s gravitational field, there is always
acceleration due to gravity. Thus the signal from an accelerometer sensor can be
separated into two signals: acceleration due to gravity and external acceleration.
Acceleration from gravity allows measurement of the tilt of the sensor by identifying
which direction is down. By filtering out the external acceleration the orientation of a 3-
axis sensor can be calculated from the acceleration on the three-accelerometer axis
orientation sensing can vary in navigation.

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 The goal of the sensor is to measure the 3d acceleration of the human hand motion with
adequate accuracy and precision, necessary bandwidth for normal human motion and the
at the same time the physical presence of the sensor should not alter hand motion.

The application of measuring something sensitive to external mass like the human hand
requires the accelerometer sensor to be extremely small and light weight. Amplitude
range for the highest normal acceleration.

By measuring the acceleration of the pen, as the user writes the text, the pen decodes the
acceleration into words and sends the signal into the computer. Such a computerized pen
is more convenient and portable than a digitalized tablet, which measures the location of
the tip of a pen on a pad.

BASIC THEORY OF OPERATION:

Accelerometer sensors convert either linear or angular acceleration to an output signal

Accelerometer sensor use Newton’s second law of motion.

F = m.a

By measuring the force from acceleration on an object whose mass is known. There are many
ways to measure the force exerted on the mass, called a proof mass but the most common
method used in accelerometer sensors is measuring the displacement of the mass when it is
suspended by springs.

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 Forces acting on the proof mass include force from external acceleration, the force from
damping (proportional to velocity) and the restorative force of the spring (proportional to
position).

In Accelerometer, sensors operating far from the resonant frequency of the mass spring
system, the effect of damping can be largely ignored. Some high precision accelerometer
sensors operate near the resonant frequency to mechanically amplify the displacement
from acceleration.

For sufficiently small displacements, the spring constant K(x) can be assumed to

be a constant. In equilibrium when the mass is not moving, the restorative force exerted
by the spring is equal to the force from acceleration on the proof mass. The displacement
of the spring, x, can be converted into an electrical signal by a variety of methods.

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 PROTOTYPE OF SMART QUILL:

This Smart Quill prototype records writing on paper for radio transmission to a pocket
pc, desktop, cell phone or tablet computer. The accelerometer tracks the angular
movement of the top of the pen at an angle in the air and these angles plotted as x/y
position on pc screen.

An early hardware prototype picture shows, left to right tilt sensor, PIC 8 bit
microcontroller, batteries, and 433Mhz 1200 Baud radio transmitter. Currently a radio
receiver on the RS232 port of a pc records the pen movement for analysis via PC. The
pen will power down after a period of no movement so doesn't need an on/off switch.
The battery life is approximately 25 hours.

2.HANDWRITING RECOGNITION SOFTWARE:

This software embedded in the microprocessor of the pen is used to recognize

handwriting of the user. Pen works in conjunction with a regular PC on to which users
install special handwriting recognition software. The handwriting recognition software
translates movements into text on screen.

Handwriting recognition software constitutes two major phases:

I. Handwriting transcription.
II. Handwriting recognition.

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 Handwriting Transcription:

In this phase, the recorded acceleration signals are then transcripted to its original form.
Here this aspect is solved using ‘simple’ double integration method in order to retrace
the pen tip movement on paper.

Method:

For this principle to work properly, we must solve two main problems:

1.Firstly, we must know pen’s spatial orientation in order to withdraw the earth gravity
component to the measured accelerations.

2.Secondly, we must succeed in the double integration, which is to solve all the
derivation problems due to this method.

Handwriting Recognition:

The second huge aspect is the characters and signatures recognition. The hardware
(accelerometers plus contact detector) embedded in the pen has proved a really efficient
combination for this application.

Method:

The same method is used to recognize the characters written by a single user and to find
whose signature is the one that has just been done.

We use a simple Euclidian distance as the comparison process, and of course the
decision process is the smaller distance found.

The first step -1- consists in creating the reference database for the characters as for the
signatures. For this a mean signal is computed for each recorded symbol.

The second step is the recognition process

1.For the creation of database, each symbol was reproduced several times and a mean
normalized symbol was computed.

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2.For recognition process, the unknown symbol is first normalized, the distance between
this symbol and the entire database symbol is computed. Then the unknown symbol is
recognized as the one with the lowest distance.

5.3 DISPLAY SCROLLS BY TILTING SCREEN:

By tilting the pen, user can choose applications and scroll through without using scroll
buttons. Below is an image of Smart Quill tilting Screen designed by Lyndsay Williams
for BT Labs in 1997. The pen would align text if it was held in left or right hand so the
text was the correct way up for left or right handed people. This was done by using
Micro Electromechanical Systems (MEMS) tilt sensors to measure tilt angle to earth.
The Smart Quill microcontroller read the angle and then mapped the large screen
display onto the small 4-line display. Smart Quill could also scroll through pages of
display by tilting it in the hand and power off if no hand movement was detected or pen
was flat on a desk. The demonstration unit below shows display inverting as Smart
Quill was inverted in the hand. The choice of words was limited to what characters the
LCD display driver could show while upside down (left hand picture) – only 14 of the
26 letters of the alphabet were usable. These 14 characters were then processed by
anagram software to produce 900 words that used these characters. The shopping list
below was produced from this limited dictionary to demonstrate the text inversion.

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5.4 COMMUNICATION WITH OTHER DEVICES:

Earlier Smart Quill models developed by BT laboratories communicated with the PC

via a radio transmitter, but the current prototype hooks up to a PC via a cable and
electronic docking station called an "inkwell.” The data stored in the memory is
uploaded to the personal computer when it is placed in to a docking station. An
electronic docking station is a small cabinet to which a laptop or notebook computer
can be attached for use as a desktop computer, usually have a connector for externally
connected devices, such as hard drives or scanners and ports that can be linked to
components such as keyboard, monitor and printer. It can also be connected to printer,
modem or mobile phones to send data electronically.

The output accelerometer signals from the pen are digitized with a National Instrument
capture card with a frequency Fe of 1000Hz and a low pass filter at Fc=1/3*Fe.

Future models could receive e-mails and pager messages via a wireless messaging
system This enables two-way wireless communication with other computing devices.

5.5 MEMORY:

Smart Quill has 4MB EEPROM memory. At a time, up to 10 pages of notes can be
stored locally on the pen. The data is stored in the memory on the pen until it is
uploaded to the personal computer. Smart Quill works by measuring the pen's
movements and matching them to the movements that produce letters and words
programmed into its memory. It's like the way a microphone detects sound.

5.6 POWER:

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 Smart Quill is powered by AAA battery. It will run for about 25hrs on a single AAA
battery. The pen exhibits automatic power on/off system. The pen will power down after
a period of no movement. So, it supports automatic on/off system.

CHAPTER-6

APPLICATIONS OF SMART QUILL

I. Smart Quill isn’t all space-age. It contains an ink cartridge so that users can see what
they write on paper. Hence a simple application of Smart Quill is that it writes notes
on paper. This information recorded in the pen is then downloaded to PC.

II. The information stored in the pen can be input to other devices such as mobile
phones, printers, modems, desktop computers etc. for different applications.

III. It also provides handheld computer applications such as digital diary, contacts,
calculators etc.

IV. It is used for receiving pager and e-mail messages. This is possible through recent
technology involved in Smart Quill, the wireless messaging system which allows
two-way communication between devices.

V. Smart Quill synchronizes files, e-mails and messages to PC.

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 CHAPTER-7

7.1 ADVANTAGES OF SMART QUILL

I. One of the major assets is that Smart Quill does not need a screen to work. This is
possible through revolutionary "Spatial Sensing" system which uses semiconductor
accelerometers. Accelerometers senses pen/hand movement instead of shapes.

II. Smart Quill provides intuitive user interface.

III. Security – Security is another important feature. It is made possible through two
facilities:
a. It enables handwriting recognition. User can train the pen to recognize a
particular handwriting style. The symbols regularly used by user get stored
in the memory, by frequent use of the pen. Hence the pen accepts only the
owner’s handwriting and rejects intruder’s handwriting.
b. It enables signature verification. Hence Passwords could be entered in the
form of signatures.

IV. The Smart Quill is also a 3D-mouse, when twisted in air in a certain way it enables
scrolling of the screen. It also automatically detects left or right-handed use.

V. Power saving
a. Small screen size requires less battery power.
b. No movement of the pen causes auto power down

7.2 DISADVANTAGES OF SMART QUILL

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 I. It has accelerometer errors.
II. It is inconvenient for persons with hand tremulous.
III. Bigger size than a normal pen.
IV. Errors are introduced in the system due to thermal variations in the spring

CHAPTER-8

CONCLUSION

This paper concentrates on providing people with a pen that performs much more
functionality than an ordinary pen. We have discussed in detail about how Smart Quill
works. It is a big support for people who takes notes on paper. This paper includes the
various features and how they are useful. Also, in this paper we have discussed the various
advantages and disadvantages of this extraordinary pen. This paper includes the details on
how the idea that came to the inventor in her dreams work.

The future of Smart Quill ensures all computation power the user needs right inside the
pen. Reducing the size of handheld computers can only be taken so far before they become
unusable. Keyboards become so tiny you require needle-like fingers to operate them and
screen that need constant cursor controls to read simple text. The introduction of Smart
Quill is the best solution for this problem.

Smart quill will be a boon to the users writing in traditional languages. It gives an option
for typing and for variety of applications. The day may come when we lose our distinctions
between the devices we use to interact with our computer and the computer themselves.

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 REFERENCES

 www.google.com

 www.wikipedia.com

 www.studymafia.org

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