InkTracer - Closing the gap between analog and digital handwriting to enable new products

“书写有着悠久的历史。它最初是画在岩石上的简单象形文字，然后将它们组合起来代表思想，并发展成更抽象的符号。就像我们今天的文字一样，早期的符号是用来存储信息并与他人交流的。我们可能认为这是理所当然的，但书面文字塑造了我们的现代文明，在未来很长一段时间里，我们将对笔和纸产生天然的亲和力。记下电话留言，在记事本上写下想法，在白板上上课，或者在抵押贷款上签字——手写仍然是我们日常生活的一部分。尽管有了现代技术，但重要的信息仍然用墨水记录在纸上或白板上的记号笔上，这很难分享，容易丢失，而且很难导航。触摸屏和数字笔已经变得司空见惯，使工作流程包括数字墨水和手写识别。这些进步使我们能够像小时候一样书写和记笔记，但仍然受益于可以由计算机解释的数据。我们可以搜索文本，存档和索引我们的笔记，甚至回去，干净地编辑原文。这些优点在纸上或白板上手写是不具备的——我们可以拍照或扫描，但电脑无法像用数字墨水那样有效地解读扫描后的手写文件中的信息。在这个项目中，Surface Intelligence和拉夫堡大学将共同开发一种解决方案，缩小模拟和数字手写之间的差距。通过采用尖端的机器学习技术，我们将开发一种解决方案，从书写的图片中恢复笔的路径。将手写文本的图像转换为数字墨水将使我们能够享受现代工作流程的好处，而不会影响我们使用笔和纸或记号笔和白板时所享受的优势。Surface Intelligence将与Wacom合作，将这一解决方案推向市场。Wacom是图形平板电脑和数字笔领域的全球领导者，为数字墨水提供前瞻性的云服务。他们非常适合就需求提出建议，并与Surface Intelligence合作，提供合理的商业主张和市场路线。”

"Writing has a very long history. It began as simple pictographs drawn on a rock, which were then combined to represent ideas and developed into more abstract symbols. Just like our writing today, early symbols were used to store information and communicate it to others. We may take it for granted, but the written word has shaped our modern civilization and we will have a natural affinity with pen and paper for a long time to come. Taking down a phone message, sketching ideas on a notepad, leading a class on a whiteboard, or signing a mortgage - handwriting remains a part of our daily lives. Despite modern technology, important information is still recorded in ink on paper or marker on whiteboard, which is hard to share, easily lost, and difficult to navigate.Touch screens and digital pens have become commonplace, enabling workflows that include digital ink and handwriting recognition. These advances allow us to write and take notes as we have since childhood, but still benefit from data that can be interpreted by a computer. We can search for text, archive and index our notes, and even go back and cleanly edit the original. These advantages are not available to handwriting on paper or a whiteboard - we can take a photo or make a scan, but computers are unable to interpret the information in a scan of a handwritten document as effectively as they can from digital ink.In this project Surface Intelligence and Loughborough University will work together to develop a solution that will close the gap between analog and digital handwriting. By employing cutting edge machine learning techniques, we will develop a solution to recover the path of a pen from a picture of the writing. Converting an image of handwritten text to digital ink will allow us to enjoy the benefits of modern workflows without disturbing the advantages we enjoy when using pen and paper or marker and whiteboard.Surface Intelligence will work in partnership with Wacom to bring this solution to the market. Wacom are world leaders in graphics tablets and digital pens with forward looking cloud services for digital ink. They are very well placed to advise on requirements and to partner with Surface Intelligence to provide a sound commercial proposition and route to market."