Design of cursive characters using robotic arm dynamics as generation mechanism

In this paper, we consider a problem of reconstructing characters and words. As the basic tool for generating characters, we employ the method of dynamic font, where designing characters and words reduces to the design of 3-dimensional motions of a virtual writing pen. Assuming that some standard characters and words are already designed, we propose a method for transforming their typefaces to the omitted running styles as seen in Japanese calligraphy. Since this is viewed as the problem of redesigning motions of the pen, we introduce a robotic arm with the pen in its hand and plan the hand motion by employing minimum torque change model. By using a velocity linearized model of arm dynamics, we solve the associated optimization problem completely. The solution is given in compact form and the computational process is straightforward as well as stable numerically. Design examples show usefulness of the proposed method