What is Digital Paper?
In order to create digital copies of handwritten documents, a digital paper can be used with a digital pen. However, one should not confuse it with electronic paper as an electronic paper displays its content in a digital way and it is easier to view the contents on it as compared to that on the traditional screens. Although digital paper is not widely used, with the advancement in technology it is considered that it will be the future of writing.
Digital paper is also called interactive paper and most of it works in a similar manner. There is an impression of individual pattern of dots on this type of paper and these dots help the scanner to locate the position of the pen on the paper. After that, this information gets processed in the form of a digital picture which may be a written text or a drawing. This image may be stored in the pen itself, or it is sent to the computer immediately. In this way, normal paper can be replaced by digital paper as it allows people to write in a similar fashion as in the case of traditional paper and pen, but the final product is much more versatile in digital paper.
The dots are 0.3 mm apart in a digital paper and are printed in the Anoto pattern. Any paper which can withstand high resolutions ranging from 600 to 1000 dots per inch and black ink can be used to print this pattern. As small as 2 mm may be the size of a digital paper and it may be as big as someone wishes. The infrared light from the pen is bounced back from the surface of the digital paper and the reflection is read by the pen which helps it to determine the location of the pen on the paper.
The size of the Anotto pattern is very large and it may cover an area as big as 73 trillion sheets of paper having a normal size. Different domains divide this huge area into different things that range from the type of the paper to the purpose of the paper. In a digital paper creation, the sheet is imprinted with only a tiny chunk of the pattern. This helps the pen to get information about the paper like buttons having immediate effects, which are based on the pen.For example, an imprinted pattern on the paper may have fields which denote an outgoing e-mail address and for sending it to that address there may be a button. Although the digital paper may look like a normal piece of paper but the special pen is enables a user to perform more sophisticated operations due to the presence of the digital paper pattern. On this sheet, one can draw diagrams and can write texts and can then write in the e-mail field and after that he/she can click the send button. In this manner, the whole handwritten document is sent to a recipient via the pen.
The Anoto Company makes most of the digital paper and their core technology is used by other companies to make digital paper. However, the products may be slightly different, as in case of the Leapfrog company which has a product called FLY which is entirely different. The digital paper has been around for many years but it caught the attention of the users only a few years back.
Category: Technology