Electronically enhanced pen using Inertial Measurement Unit for handwriting recognition

In this work, an innovative idea of capturing human handwriting in real time using inertial sensors is introduced. The paper presents a novel way of using an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) to create a “Smart pen”. This Smart Pen can detect changes in its orientation that occur during writing any word, or an alphabet. The onboard gyroscopes and accelerometers of the Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) calculate the values of yaw, pitch and roll angles made by the 3 dimensional geometry of the pen. These values are sent to a microcontroller board using the Inter Integrated Circuit (I2C) protocol for serial communication. Depending on these values and the writing style of each letter, the Pen identifies which alphabet is written. The writing style of each person is different. Hence calibration for each person is necessary. This recognized alphabet/word can be displayed on a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) screen which is interfaced to an Arduino board.