Survey of Pen-and-Paper Computing - Human-Computer Interaction - page 32

Fig. 2.7 Livescribe Echo SmartPen (photo copyright Livescribe)

OLED display. In addition to capturing notes, it can be used to record and playback
audio and to perform calculations. An SDK provides for developing further applica-
tions (so-called penlets) which are executed directly on the pen. While these novel
pens enable to develop more interactive interfaces including direct system feedback
on the pen, they do not provide a wireless Bluetooth connection.

Erasing Pens A further shortcoming of current Anoto pens is that they do not allow
users to erase physical pen traces. Olberding and Steimle [111] have demonstrated
an easy and inexpensive method to add erasing capabilities to Anoto pens. Anoto
plans to commercially deploy an eraser pen (ADE-501) in the near future that can
be used to erase contents on whiteboards, but not on paper documents. 14

Pen Input on Displays All these solutions aim at supporting pen input on paper.

How ever, Anoto pens can also be used as a stylus for providing input on screens.

Brandl et al. [10] presented an approach that enables using Anoto pens on rear-projec
tion multi-touch screens. This type of screen is typically used in interactive tabletop
and wall displays. Their approach relies on printing the Anoto pattern on a translu
cent foil. Like on paper, the pen decodes its position from the printed pattern. This
po

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sition can be converted to screen coordinates. More recently, Hofer and Kunz [38]
introduced a method that allows using Anoto pens also on LCD displays. Anoto is
announcing their own solution for input on displays to be released soon. Theses ap-
proaches enable to produce very large pen-enabled displays that have a high input
resolution at relatively low cost. Moreover, in contrast to competing technologies
for pen input on displays, multiple pens can be simultaneously used.

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