Sensitive pen 2.0

Present research activity at Université Grenoble Alpes: Sensitive Pen 2.0 in collaboration with Interface Human Machine community

• The act of writing is, for most of us, our most expert gesture. 
• Our idea is to insert/attach an IMU (IMU are motion micro-sensors, they are present in all smartphones) on a pen, pencil, or brush to enable a new multimedia creative expression (sound, music, light) derived from handwriting.
• Looking at this pen we name Sensitive Pen, we reflect on the importance and strength of traditional calligraphy.

Handwriting and its learning are commonly framed by concerns of efficiency: writing to convey information. Nowadays this is done mostly using keyboard.

Yet historically, calligraphy has found its place among the arts.

In Europe, schools invest very little in this artistic dimension of writing, which seems confined to specialists.
Elsewhere, with different traditions, I do not know.

The idea here is to place motion micro-sensors (IMUs) on a pen, pencil, or brush to capture the characteristics of the writing gesture.
In real time, this data can be transformed into sound and/or light, forming with the trace left on paper a multimedia production. This is a proposal for a new form of expression built around a pen, a pencil, or a brush. 

Handwriting is rooted in humanity shared expertise: even today, most of us know how to write by hand, and this is a skill painstakingly acquired through years of learning.
The aim here is to explore how this interactive multimedia pen, pencil, or brush can offer new forms of expression.

Creating this new tool, at least as a prototype, is what we are currently doing. Remarkably, there is no technological lock to overcome, and probably no “intellectual property” barrier, despite Stabilo’s patents on IMU in pen—placing an IMU on a pen is obvious to a practitioner, particularly since smartphones now embed the same IMUs. Beside they are widely used in health, sports, and other fields to measure and track characteristics of movements.

The cost of IMUs, which exist in billions of units around us, is very low, and pens, pencils, and brushes also exist in the billions. Ultimately, it is a matter of software coding without great sophistication compared to what digital arts produce, and of design to create an intuitive product. We explore Sensitive Pen to ideally make it « a must have ». To me, this vision cannot be reduced to the usual approach of scientific research. An interdisciplinary approach is necessary.
On these two points, I concluded that working with a company expert in writing technologies was essential. Partner remains to be found !

Writing is first and foremost movement. Beyond the written message, movement also makes it possible to inscribe subjectivity in the form of writing, adding a singular presence through this sensitive manifestation. Today’s digital pens, like our Sensitive Pen 2.0, are classic pens but with inside sensors (accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer) to record movement well beyond the trace. The first applications are in the field of learning to write and detecting disorders such as dysgraphia (Ana Phelippeau’s thesis supervised by Joël Chevrier, defended in 2024 at Université Paris Cité). This project focuses on the sensitive manifestations of this recording of movement, notably through sound. Writing is the most sophisticated gesture shared by the greatest number of people.
Our hypothesis is that Sensitive Pen 2.0 should make it possible to control sounds, and thus to have a personal and sensitive expression akin to the musical practice of an instrument.

Sensitive Pen: An Open-Source And Low-Cost Digital Pen For Diagnosing Children With Dysgraphia in IHM ’25: Proceedings of the 36th Conference on l’Interaction Humain-Machine Article No.: 14, Pages 1 – 13

AI and Digital Pens: New Tools for Measuring Handwriting, Its Learning Process, and Dysgraphia, article published in Medium