Embedding Meta-Information in Handwriting -- Reed-Solomon for Reliable Error Correction

In this paper a more compact and more reliable coding scheme for the data-embedding pen is proposed. The data-embedding pen produces an additional ink-dot sequence along a handwritten pattern during writing. The ink-dot sequence represents, for example, meta-information (such as the writer’s name and the date of writing) and thus drastically increases the value of the handwriting on a physical paper. There is no need to get access to any memory on the pen to recover the information, which is especially useful in multi-writer or multi-pen scenarios. In this paper we focus on the compactness of the encoded information. The aim of this paper is to encode as much information as possible in short stroke sequences. In our experiments we show that we can embed more information in shorter strokes than in previous work. In straight lines as short as 5 cm, 32 bits can successfully be embedded. Furthermore, the new encoding scheme also works reliably on more complex patterns.