A NOVEL-G AND TECHNOLOGY-TRANSFER - AUTOMATED NOTETAKING IN THE CLASSROOM OF THE FUTURE
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Electro-optical sensor systems, having evolved rapidly in aerospace applications over the past three decades, are finding increasingly significant roles in many other high-precision measurement applications from robotics to manufacturing and emerging multi-media systems. The present paper introduces new electro-optical sensing technology for electronic blackboard and related passive stereo measurement applications. The electronic blackboard enables real-time digitization of hand-written and hand-drawn information using a totally passive writing surface and writing instrument. Two resonant laser scanners sweep out a plane, the angular position of the two beams (at the instants that the beams are interrupted by the laser beams by a hand-held stylus such as a felt tip marker) are detected. These data can be used to digitize coordinates along the hand-drawn lines with high precision (approximately 1 part in 16,000) and digitization rates (approximately 160 HZ). The data input surface dimensions can vary from small to large (permitting digitization on wall-sized writing surfaces), thus enabling a new family of applications. In particular, we discuss a novel application of this laser digitizing system, in conjunction with emerging radio modem and pen-computer technology, to the automation of class or conference room note-taking. This technology will find applications in many distance learning environments. Other potential applications exist in the emerging multi-media systems, manufacturing and robotics.
