This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project from Virtual Ink Corporation extends the scope of the firm's handwriting transcription technology from its primary use on large collaborative whiteboards found in conference and meeting rooms to educational distance learning and video conferencing applications such as chalkboards and flipcharts. Virtual Ink has successfully demonstrated a retrofit digital transcription system to capture handwritten text and sketches off of a dry-erase marker board up to 8' x 4' in size. Transcriptions are done in color and real-time uploading the resulting information to a personal computer, where it can be stored, sharing via the World Wide Web, or exported to a variety of electronic and digital document formats. This project will investigate issues specific to the educational, distance learning, and video conferencing infrastructures and yield concrete research to support critical product design directions and embodiments to be subsequently pursued. An affordable technology to convert any flat surface into a high-resolution, freestyle handwriting capture medium (such as whiteboard, chalkboard, flipchart, drafting table, or desktop) in order to view, share, store, or export data to a variety of digital and electronic document formats would permit business professionals, scientists, engineers, architects, designs and others to have useful and creative meetings without having to leave the office. This technology allows remote brainstorming to become a practical reality. With the increase of professional telecommuting from home, the ability to creatively brainstorm and solve problems with others remotely will have a significant impact on personal and professional productivity.
