FORT HUACHUCA, ARIZ. — It has been said that the pen is mightier than the sword.
On the battlefield, troops are discovering that it is mightier than the computer.
Picking up a pen to jot notes on paper in many cases is faster and more reliable than booting up a classified laptop to create a document, troops say. But those handwritten notes create problems later when ground units need to share that information with their peers and commanders. Annotations have to be entered into databases, which can take days or weeks to accomplish.
To help solve that ink-to-digital translation hitch, scientists are embedding sensors and processors inside pens to capture what troops write in the field. Increasingly, those technologists are fusing the capability with speech recognition and gesturing so that commanders can literally think out loud and sketch as they make critical decisions.
Adapx, a Seattle-based company, has produced a digital pen solution, based on Anoto technology, that captures a writer’s strokes on paper. When that data is uploaded to a computer, the ink markings appear on the digital version of the respective document. The company has integrated its software with a number of programs, including Microsoft Excel, OneNote and the government mapping tool, ArcGIS.
“Pen and paper is now, for all intents and purposes, keyboard and mouse,” said Scott Lind, vice president of sales and engineering.
The pen contains a lens assembly located beneath the ink cartridge. When a soldier starts to write, an infrared imager behind the lens illuminates a 7-millimeter square of the paper, which is covered with miniscule dot patterns specially printed on each sheet. They form mathematically unique patterns, just like a fingerprint, and help the processor correlate the markings to the page. The imager tracks the person’s handwriting 75 times per second.
When the writer wants to upload the data, he can connect the pen to the computer or send the information wirelessly via Bluetooth. The company’s Capturx software residing within the programs acts as a traffic cop, directing the information to the appropriate document. “The data is automatically converted,” said Lind. “It’s as if you used a keyboard and mouse or stylus to put the information into the system.”
Adapx has partnered with Arlington, Va.-based TerraGo Technologies, which produces software that converts complex military geospatial maps into user-friendly PDF files for portability and sharing purposes.
“You have everything you have on a regular map but now in Adobe Reader,” said Kevin Coles, federal sales engineer for TerraGo. The geo-referenced PDF, or GeoPDF, document allows users to layer additional data onto the map, including photos, graphics and the data from the digital pen. The data can be exported as a file into Google Earth, Coles added.
During a recent exercise here, soldiers were given pens and digitally enabled notebooks and maps to conduct reconnaissance missions in the Arizona desert. They spoke with role-playing actors to gain intelligence and marked new trails, caves and suspected roadside bombs on their maps. Later, they brought the pens back to their command facility and uploaded the data, which was immediately available to analysts waiting to sort through the information.
In the command center, Lind demonstrated the process. Using the digital pen, he squiggled a black line on a military map that had been printed with the dot patterns. The digital ink color defaulted to red, but he could change it by touching the pen to several color palette boxes printed on a laminated card in his notebook. He touched one marked yellow, and wrote the word “yellow.” He hit the box marked bronze and wrote a “B.” Then he crumpled the map, tore it in half and then selected blue and wrote “blue” in the corner. When he synced the pen, all of his markings, even the blue-colored word, appeared on the digital PDF map.
So far, feedback from the exercise has been positive. “The soldiers could keep their head in the fight and they did not have to worry about system interface or screen glare or anything else. They could focus on the task, not the tool,” said Lind.
The team is preparing to deploy the pens to Army units. In the meantime, the company is combining digital pen developments with other interface technologies, such as voice and touch. A commander planning an operation at a smart white board can draw military icons on the map by sketching boxes and speaking the name of the entity, such as an enemy tank platoon.
“You can draw that enemy tank platoon on the map and our coded recognizers will compare it to a library of military symbols and replace your ink sketch with the appropriate symbol,” said Lind.
In the company’s lab, scientists are streaming digital ink directly to Google Earth in much the same way that sportscasters draw on the television screen during broadcasts.