Using mobile phones to write in air

Abstract

Numerous sensors in modern mobile phones enable a range of people-centric applications. This paper envisions a system called PhonePoint Pen that uses the in-built accelerometer in mobile phones to recognize human writing. By holding the phone like a pen, a user should be able to write short messages or draw simple diagrams in the air. The acceleration due to hand gestures can be translated into geometric strokes, and recognized as characters. We prototype the PhonePoint Pen on the Nokia N95 platform, and evaluate it through real users. Results show that English characters can be identified with an average accuracy of 91.9%, if the users conform to a few reasonable constraints. Future work is focused on refining the prototype, with the goal of offering a new user-experience that complements keyboards and touch-screens.