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

“写作有很长的历史。它最初是画在岩石上的简单象形文字，然后结合起来代表思想，并发展成为更抽象的符号。就像我们今天的写作一样，早期的符号被用来存储信息并与他人交流。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，我们将有一个自然的亲和力与笔和纸很长一段时间。记下电话留言，在记事本上勾画想法，在白板上上课，或签署抵押贷款-手写仍然是我们日常生活的一部分。尽管技术先进，但重要的信息仍然以墨水记录在纸上或白板上，难以共享，容易丢失，难以导航。触摸屏和数字笔已经变得司空见惯，实现了包括数字墨水和手写识别在内的工作流程。这些进步使我们能够像孩提时代一样书写和做笔记，但仍然受益于计算机可以解释的数据。我们可以搜索文本，存档和索引我们的笔记，甚至可以返回并干净地编辑原始内容。这些优势是手写在纸上或白板上所不具备的--我们可以拍照或进行扫描，但计算机无法像数字墨水那样有效地解读手写文档扫描中的信息。在这个项目中，Surface Intelligence和拉夫堡大学将合作开发一种解决方案，缩小模拟手写和数字手写之间的差距。通过采用先进的机器学习技术，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标记和白板时所享受的优势。Surface Intelligence将与Wacom合作，将此解决方案推向市场。Wacom是图形平板电脑和数字笔的世界领导者，为数字墨水提供前瞻性的云服务。他们非常适合就需求提供建议，并与Surface Intelligence合作，提供合理的商业主张和市场途径。"

"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."