I could have used this growing up. It would have been so nice to have a pen that would tell me if I misspelled a word. I would love to have one now. Yes, we all type more than we write, but maybe we would write more if we had autocorrect in a pen. It’s so nice to have something that watches our every word.
That is exactly the feeling of entrepreneurs Daniel Kaesmacher and Falk Wolsky of Munich, Germany. They wanted to make a pen for their children that contains handwriting recognition software so that their errors would be immediately corrected. The pen vibrates when you spell a word incorrectly and then gives you the correction.
The pen, called Lernstift, is now being promoted on Kickstarter in order to get the funds to go into full production. The goal is $183,000. At the present time, the pen recognizes the characters and words and compares them to its dictionary database. The Kickstarter campaign explains “The algorithm tells you that you wrote Pollice instead of Police or responds with a red flag when the written word simply does not exist in the database.”
The Lernstift contains an embedded Linux system. It also has a motion sensor, processor, memory, Wi-Fi, and a vibration module.
The co-founders want an open platform so software developers can eventually create apps. That means in future generations the Lernstift could offer other languages, grammar correction, and games.
The Lernstift is being targeted for everyone, from school kids to 90-year-olds. I will let you know when the digital pen becomes available.
DigiDame 