3508 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 57, NO.
10, OCTOBER 2010
An Inertial-Measurement-Unit-Based Pen With
a Trajectory Reconstruction Algorithm
and Its Applications
Jeen-Shing Wang, Member, IEEE, Yu-Liang Hsu, and Jiun-Nan Liu
Abstract—This paper presents an inertial-measurement-
unit-based pen (IMUPEN) and its associated trajectory reconstruc-
tion algorithm for motion trajectory reconstruction and
handwritten digit recognition applications. The IMUPEN is com-
posed of a triaxial accelerometer, two gyroscopes, a microcon-
troller, and an RF wireless transmission module. Users can
hold the IMUPEN to write numerals or draw simple symbols
at normal speed. During writing or drawing movements, the
inertial signals generated for the movements are transmitted to
a computer via the wireless module. A trajectory reconstruction
algorithm composed of the procedures of data collection, signal
preprocessing, and trajectory reconstruction has been developed
for reconstructing the trajectories of movements. In order to
minimize the cumulative errors caused by the intrinsic noise/drift
of sensors, we have developed an orientation error compensation
method and a multiaxis dynamic switch. The advantages of the
IMUPEN include the following: 1) It is portable and can be
used anywhere without any external reference device or writing
ambit limitations, and 2) its trajectory reconstruction algorithm
can reduce orientation and integral errors effectively and thus
can reconstruct the trajectories of movements accurately. Our
experimental results on motion trajectory reconstruction and
handwritten digit recognition have successfully validated the
effectiveness of the IMUPEN and its trajectory reconstruction
algorithm.
Index Terms—Handwritten digit recognition, inertial sensing,
multiaxis dynamic (MAD) switch, orientation error compensation,
pen-type input devices, trajectory reconstruction algorithm.
I. I NTRODUCTION
R ECENTLY, tremendous progress in miniaturization tech-
nology in electronic circuits and components has greatly
reduced the dimension and weight of computers and per-
sonal digital assistants, thus making them extremely powerful,
portable, and convenient. Due to the revolutionary paradigm
shift in computer technology, human–computer interaction
(HCI) techniques have become an important part of our daily
lives. For the past decades, fusing emerging technologies to
create more user-friendly interfaces has been a continuing rev-
olution in the HCI research community. Particularly to enhance
Manuscript received June 27, 2009; revised August 22, 2009; accepted
October 30, 2009. Date of publication December 31, 2009; date of current
version September 10, 2010.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, National
Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan (e-mail: jeenshin@mail.ncku.
edu.tw).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIE.2009.2038339
0278-0046/$26.00 © 2010 IEEE
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the portability of devices without introducing additional dimen-
sion and weight for HCI devices, most existing products have
relied on a liquid crystal display (LCD) screen with a touch
panel to provide an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI). In
addition, many researchers have focused on developing novel
HCI methods based on human behaviors [4], [8], [10], [12].
Recently, pen-based input devices embedded with inertial
sensors have been provided for hand gestures or handwriting
[2], [3], [5], [6], [9], [24]. A salient superiority of inertial
sensors for general motion sensing is that they can be operated
without any external reference (such as infrared, radar, or video
motion-sensing technologies) or limitation in working condi-
tions (such as friction, wind, directions, or dimensions) [20].
This kind of device usually comprises two types of sensors:
accelerometers for sensing translational accelerations and gyro-
scopes for detecting angular velocities. However, most inertial-
sensor-based recognition systems suffer from low recognition
rates due to various errors generated by the inertial sensors.
The errors not only involve the effects of sensor uncertainty,
namely, sensitivity and offset, but also include contingent error
sources, such as intrinsic drift of inertial sensors, circuit thermal
noise, time discretization, quantization error, vibration, friction,
etc. To improve the recognition accuracy, many researchers
have focused on the subject of error compensation of iner-
tial sensors to develop effective algorithms. To name a few,
Bang et al. [2] used an error compensation method, called zero
velocity compensation, to compensate the acceleration signals.
Luo et al. [15] designed an extended Kalman filter based on a
micro inertial measurement unit (IMU) with magnetometers for
real-time attitude compensation. Zhang et al. [23] showed that
the Kalman filter is an effective technique to reduce noise of in-
ertial sensors. Tsang et al. [19] utilized an electromagnetic reso-
nance motion detection board to improve the tracking accuracy
of a digital writing instrument. Yun and Bachmann [22] pro-
posed a quaternion-based Kalman filter which combines with
acceleration, angular velocity, and local magnetic field for hu-
man body motion tracking. Suh [17] proposed a multiple-mode
Kalman filter for 1-D attitude estimation using accelerometers
and gyroscopes. Won et al. [21] used a Kalman filter with IMU
sensors to estimate the orientation and reduce the orientation
error caused by the integration of angular velocity error.
An inertial-measurement-unit-based pen-type input device,
named IMUPEN, and a trajectory reconstruction algorithm
have been developed in this paper. The IMUPEN is composed
of a triaxial accelerometer, two gyroscopes, a microcontroller,
WANG et al.: IMUPEN WITH A TRAJECTORY RECONSTRUCTION ALGORITHM AND ITS APPLICATIONS
Fig. 1. IMUPEN hardware device. (a) Front view of the circuit. (b) Back view
of the circuit.
and an RF wireless transmission module. The measured inertial
signals from the sensors are transmitted to a computer via the
wireless module. Users can use the IMUPEN to write numerals
or draw simple symbols at normal speed without any space
limitation. The movement trajectories can be reconstructed
by the trajectory reconstruction algorithm, which consists of
the procedures of data collection, signal preprocessing, and
trajectory reconstruction. In order to minimize the cumulative
error caused by the intrinsic noise/drift of sensors, we have
developed an orientation error compensation method and a
multiaxis dynamic (MAD) switch. The effectiveness of the
IMUPEN and its associated trajectory reconstruction algorithm
has been validated by two experiments. The advantages of
our proposed HCI input device include the following: 1) It is
portable and can be used anywhere without any external refer-
ence device or writing ambit limitations, and 2) the trajectory
reconstruction algorithm can reduce orientation and integral
errors effectively and thus can reconstruct the trajectories of
movements accurately.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In
Section II, we introduce the IMUPEN hardware components
in detail. The proposed trajectory reconstruction algorithm is
presented in Section III. Section IV provides experimental
results of motion trajectory reconstruction and handwriting
recognition applications. Finally, conclusions are presented in
Section V.
II. IMUPEN S YSTEM
Our IMUPEN is a pen-type portable HCI device that gener-
ates and transmits the inertial signals of handwriting motions.
The IMUPEN includes an IMU, a microcontroller (C8051F206
with a 12-b A/D converter), and an RF wireless transmis-
sion module (nRF2401). The size of the pen-type board is
125 mm × 15 mm × 15 mm as shown in Fig. 1. The IMU is
composed of one triaxial accelerometer (LIS3L02AQ3), one
uniaxial angular rate gyroscope (ADXRS300), and one biaxial
angular rate gyroscope (IDG-300). The accelerometer plays a
role in detecting the acceleration, velocity, and position of hand
motion, and the two gyroscopes are used to detect the orien-
tation of handwriting motions. The LIS3L02AQ3 possesses a
user selectable full scale of ±2g and ±6g and is able to measure
accelerations over the bandwidth of 1.5 kHz for all axes. The
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3509
Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of the IMUPEN.
accelerometer’s sensitivity was set from −2g to +2g in this
paper. The ADXRS300 measures the Z-axis angular rate (yaw
rate) of the IMUPEN, and its full-scale range and sensitivity
are ±300◦ /s and 5.0 mV/◦ /s, respectively. The IDG-300
can simultaneously sense the X- and Y -axis angular rates
(roll and pitch rates) of the IMUPEN, and its full-scale range
and sensitivity are ±500◦ /s and 2.0 mV/◦ /s, respectively.
The microcontroller of the IMUPEN is responsible to collect
the analog signals generated from the accelerometer and the
gyroscopes, to transform the signals to digital ones via an
internal 12-b A/D converter, and to transmit the data to the PC
main processor. The sampling rate (fs ) of the microcontroller is
100 Hz. The RF transceiver is capable of wirelessly transmitting
all signals measured by the accelerometer and gyroscopes to a
computer for further signal processing and analysis. Note that
all signal processing procedures are performed on a PC. The
battery of the IMUPEN is replaceable and rechargeable. The
overall power consumption of the hardware device is 30 mA
at 3.7 V. Fig. 2 shows the schematic diagram of the IMUPEN
hardware system.
III. T RAJECTORY R ECONSTRUCTION A LGORITHM
A trajectory reconstruction algorithm has been developed to
perform the trajectory reconstruction of motions or movements
using the signals measured by the inertial sensors embedded
in the IMUPEN. The trajectory reconstruction algorithm is
composed of the following procedures: 1) data collection;
2) signal preprocessing; and 3) trajectory reconstruction. At the
beginning of the procedure, the acceleration signals and angular
rate signals are transmitted to a computer via the RF transceiver.
Before using the IMUPEN, we need to calibrate the inertial
sensors to reduce the errors of sensitivity and offset of the
sensors first. Then, a moving average filter is applied to remove
high-frequency noise from the raw data. The trajectory recon-
struction procedure includes the following steps: 1) orientation
estimation; 2) coordinate transformation and gravity compen-
sation; and 3) position estimation. In the orientation estimation
step, the quaternion representation is employed to express the
orientation of the IMUPEN. To obtain correct orientation of
the IMUPEN, adaptive magnitude thresholds are used to detect
the rotation interval of the filtered acceleration and angular
 3510
Fig. 3. Trajectory reconstruction process of the IMUPEN.
velocity signals. Based on the detection, the corresponding
filtered acceleration and angular velocity are then used to obtain
the static and dynamic orientation angles of the IMUPEN. In
addition, an orientation error compensation method is used to
reduce the orientation error and to improve the accuracy of the
orientation. Once we obtain the quaternion-based orientation,
the filtered acceleration can be transformed from the body
coordinate to the reference coordinate, and the gravitational
acceleration can then be removed. In the position estimation
step, a MAD switch is used to detect the integration interval of
the compensated acceleration based on the adaptive magnitude
thresholds of the acceleration and the velocity. Finally, the final
acceleration is doubly integrated to obtain the trajectories of
handwriting motions. The trajectory reconstruction process of
the IMUPEN is shown in Fig. 3.
A. Signal Preprocessing
Signal preprocessing is a required procedure for the sig-
nals measured by inertial sensors embedded in the IMUPEN
because the signals are always contaminated not only by the
aforementioned error sources but also with users’ unconscious
trembles. Since a relatively small drift error or offset on the ac-
celeration or angular velocity will produce large integral errors,
obtaining signals that contain no undesired signal component
has become an importance issue for trajectory reconstruction.
In our approach, we first calibrate the accelerometer and gyro-
scopes. After obtaining the calibrated measurements, a digital
filter is used to filter the high-frequency noise of the raw data
generated by the IMU.
Calibration of IMU: Two important factors are usually used
to calibrate inertial sensors: a scale factor (SF) and a bias [1].
The SF (or sensitivity) denotes the ratio of change in the sensor
output to change in the sensor input, and the bias (B) (or
offset) denotes the average sensor output over a specific time.
This has no correlation with the input. The detailed calculation
of the SF and bias of the IMU can be found in [18]. When
the IMUPEN is stationary, the output of each sensitive axis
of the triaxial accelerometer contains only the gravitational
acceleration. According to this fact, we calibrate the triaxial
accelerometer to align each axis with the Earth’s gravity [11],
[14]. To perform the calibration, we first mount the triaxial
accelerometer on a leveled surface and then point each axis
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 57, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2010
alternately upward and downward. The SF and the bias in
each axis of the triaxial accelerometer can be expressed as
follows:
V (+g) − V (−g)
SFacc = (1)
2g
V (+g) + V (−g)
Bacc = (2)
2
where V (+g) and V (−g) are the voltage outputs in each axis
of the accelerometer when it is aligned with the direction of
the Earth’s gravity and with the opposite direction of Earth’s
gravity, respectively. SFacc is expressed in volts per g (V/g),
while Bacc is in volts, where g is the gravitational acceleration.
The acceleration in each axis can be calibrated by the following
equation:
Vacc − Bacc
Ac = (3)
SFacc
where Vacc is the output voltage in each axis of the accelerom-
eter. As a result of (3), the outputs of the three axes of the
triaxial accelerometer (Acx , Acy , and Acz ) can be converted
from voltage to acceleration (in terms of g). In general, the
outputs of each axis of the accelerometer are +1g and −1g
when the IMUPEN is stationary.
In the procedure of the gyroscope calibration, we use the
sensitivity in each axis of the gyroscopes presented in the
datasheet as the SF of the gyroscopes (SFgyro ). The SFgyro
is expressed in volts per degree per second (V/◦ /s), where ◦ /s
is the angular velocity. If the IMUPEN is stationary without
any rotation, the ideal outputs of the gyroscopes should be
zero. However, there is a nonzero offset and drift signals in
the output of the gyroscopes due to temperature and stress
variations. In this paper, the bias of each axis of the gyroscopes
(Bgyro ) is set as the mean of the angular velocities collected
by keeping the IMUPEN stationary in the beginning. Thus, the
angular velocity in each axis can be calibrated by the following
equation:
Vgyro − Bgyro
ωc = (4)
SFgyro
where Vgyro is the output voltage of each axis of the gyroscopes
and Bgyro is expressed in volts. With (4), we can convert the
WANG et al.: IMUPEN WITH A TRAJECTORY RECONSTRUCTION ALGORITHM AND ITS APPLICATIONS
outputs of the three axes of the gyroscopes (ωcx , ωcy , and
ωcz ) from voltage to angular velocity (in terms of degrees per
second).
Low-Pass Filter: After we obtain the six calibrated measure-
ments (Acx , Acy , Acz , ωcx , ωcy , and ωcz ) from the aforemen-
tioned calibration process, a moving average filter is used to
reduce the high-frequency noise of the six signals from the
IMU. The representation of the filter is expressed as
N
1 
y[n] = x[n − i]
N i=1
where x[n] is the input signal, y[n] is the output signal, and N
is the number of points in the average filter (N = 15 is used in
this paper). The six filtered signals of the IMU are denoted as
Abx , Aby , Abz , ωbx , ωby , and ωbz .
B. Quaternion-Based Orientation Estimation
Once we obtain the filtered signals of the IMU, we can use
them to estimate the orientation and position (or trajectory)
of the IMUPEN via the integral operations. To reconstruct a
spatial trajectory, we first transfer the filtered acceleration from
the body coordinate to the reference coordinate. For the spatial
trajectory reconstruction, the corresponding orientation of the
signal is required to perform the coordinate transformation.
Note that the more accurate the orientation estimation is, the
better the trajectory reconstruction result we can obtain. In this
paper, we utilize the quaternions to represent the orientation of
the IMUPEN.
For the orientation estimation, we use two kinds of sensors:
rate and direct sensors. We choose two gyroscopes, one uniaxial
and one biaxial, as our rate sensors. Since the initial orientation
angles cannot be obtained by gyroscopes, we need to obtain
initial orientation angles from a direct sensor which can pro-
vide direct information about the orientation of the objects.
Fortunately, an accelerometer can measure two orientation
angles directly without any integral operation; therefore, the
accelerometer embedded in the IMUPEN is used as the direct
sensor. During the course of the trajectory reconstruction, we
have to decide which sensor to use for the orientation estimation
at each time step. We partition the whole time interval into
three phases: a prior static attitude estimation phase, a dynamic
attitude estimation phase, and a posterior static attitude esti-
mation phase. In the two static attitude estimation phases, the
orientation of the IMUPEN is computed through the acceler-
ation signals measured by the triaxial accelerometer. The first
static attitude estimation phase decides the initial orientation
angles for the latter dynamic attitude estimation phase, while
the second one calculates the final orientation angles at the
end of the pen motion. The dynamic attitude estimation phase
calculates the orientation angles when the IMUPEN is being
rotated. The calculation within the dynamic attitude estimation
phase involves both the rate and direct sensors. The orientation
angles within the dynamic attitude estimation phase are first
calculated by the filtered reading from the gyroscopes, and
then, an orientation error compensation method is employed
to further improve the accuracy of the orientation estimation
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3511
using the information of the acceleration. The aforementioned
three computational phases are based on the quaternion repre-
sentation [7]. The proposed orientation estimation algorithm is
elaborated as follows.
Rotation Detection: The filtered gyroscope signals are still
contaminated with drift errors and user’s unconscious trembles.
Therefore, the filtered signals from the gyroscopes are not
always equal to zero, while the IMUPEN is stationary. In
order to avoid this problem, a thresholding method is used to
determine the start and end points of the rotation interval of the
(5)
IMUPEN. We developed an adaptive magnitude thresholding
method for detecting if the IMUPEN is rotated during hand-
writing motions. That is, the thresholds for discriminating the
rotation signals from the nonrotation signals are determined
dynamically according to different motions.
The filtered acceleration and gyroscope signals at the be-
ginning of a motion, denoted as tinitial , are used to determine
the thresholds. The magnitudes of the filtered acceleration and
gyroscope signals are defined as follows:
 
 
EAb (k) =  A2bx (k) + A2by (k) + A2bz (k) − 1 (6)

Eωb (k) = ωbx
2 (k) + ω 2 (k) + ω 2 (k)
by bz (7)
where EAb (k) and Eωb (k) are the magnitudes of the filtered
acceleration and gyroscope signals, respectively, and k denotes
the time steps. Note that the filtered acceleration in (6) includes
the gravitational acceleration that should be subtracted
from the filtered acceleration. We set the multiples of the
maximum values of EAb (k) and Eωb (k) in the interval of tinitial
as thresholds in the following equations:
TA = Kt max (EAb (k)) (8)
k
Tω = Kt max (Eωb (k)) (9)
k
where k denotes the time steps in the interval of tinitial and Kt
is an empirical value (Kt = 2 is used in this paper). Once we
obtain the thresholds, the rotation interval can be determined
by selecting the start and end points (or time steps) whose
magnitudes are higher and lower than the thresholds, respec-
tively. With the two thresholds of the filtered acceleration and
gyroscope signals, we can obtain two sets of start and end points
for the rotation interval. The first set, tA A
start and tend , is obtained
from the acceleration signals, and the second set, tω start and
tω
end , is obtained from the gyroscope signals. We then determine
the rotation interval of a motion by choosing the minimum
value of the two start points, tstart = min(tA ω
start , tstart ), and the
maximum value of the two end points, tend = max(tA ω
end , tend ),
to avoid inaccuracy in the attitude estimation of the prior and
posterior static phases. After defining the rotation interval, we
can separate the whole interval into the following three phases:
the prior static attitude estimation phase, the dynamic attitude
estimation phase, and the posterior static attitude estimation
phase. The curves in Fig. 4 are acceleration and angular ve-
locity signals obtained from the accelerometer and gyroscopes
directly. Fig. 4 shows how to obtain the partition of the rotation
 3512 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 57, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2010

Fig. 4. Partition of the rotation interval by the proposed rotation detection method. (a) Detection of the start and end points of the rotation interval based on
TA . (b) Detection of the start and end points of the rotation interval based on Tω . (c) Partition of the rotation interval into three phases based on TA and Tω
simultaneously.

interval into the aforementioned three phases by the proposed the body coordinate through the sequence of rotation of yaw
rotation detection method. The region with a gray color and the angle (ψ) about the Z-axis, rotation of pitch angle (θ) about
region with no color represent the static and dynamic attitude the Y -axis, and rotation of roll angle (φ) about the X-axis
estimation intervals, respectively. sequentially.
Prior Static Attitude Estimation Phase: Static estimation In the prior static attitude estimation phase, the roll angle (φ)
plays the following two important roles: 1) obtaining the initial and pitch angle (θ) of the IMUPEN can be derived directly from
orientation angles for the dynamic attitude estimation phase and the filtered acceleration signals. To obtain the roll angle (φ),
2) obtaining the final orientation angles for the orientation error the following three different cases are defined to cope with the
compensation method. Under ideal circumstances, the filtered range limitation of the arctangent:
gyroscope signals should be zero in the two static phases. In  
Aby (k)
practice, however, the gyroscope signals are still contaminated φ(k) = tan−1 ,
with drift errors and user’s unconscious trembles, which will Abz (k)
cause a significant error in the orientation estimation. If we
estimate the orientation based on the gyroscopes, we may end for Abz (k) < 0 (10)
up with a random walk in orientation rather than the actual  
Aby (k)
orientation due to a cumulative error over a time interval. More- φ(k) = −π + tan−1 ,
Abz (k)
over, the initial orientation angles cannot be directly obtained
from the gyroscopes. Hence, the accelerometer is utilized in for Abz (k) > 0 and Aby (k) > 0 (11)
the two static attitude estimation phases. In this paper, we use
 
the Euler angles to represent the orientation angles first. The Aby (k)
yaw, pitch, and roll angles are related to the reference and φ(k) = π + tan−1 ,
Abz (k)
body coordinates through a rotation sequence of (ZY X). That
is, the reference coordinate can be rotated to coincide with for Abz (k) > 0 and Aby (k) < 0. (12)

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WANG et al.: IMUPEN WITH A TRAJECTORY RECONSTRUCTION ALGORITHM AND ITS APPLICATIONS
Once the roll angle is determined, the pitch angle can be
computed by the following equation:
⎛ ⎞
A bx (k)
θ(k) = tan−1 ⎝  ⎠. (13)
A2by (k) + A2bz (k)
In this phase, the yaw angle (ψ) can be set at zero de-
grees [16]. After obtaining the Euler angles (φ, θ, ψ), we can
compute the parameters of the quaternion representation, q =
[q0 , q1 , q2 , q3 ]T , by the following equations:
q0 = cos(α) cos(β) cos(γ) + sin(α) sin(β) sin(γ)
q1 = cos(α) cos(β) sin(γ) − sin(α) sin(β) cos(γ)
q2 = cos(α) sin(β) cos(γ) + sin(α) cos(β) sin(γ)
q3 = sin(α) cos(β) cos(γ) − cos(α) sin(β) sin(γ) (14)
where α = ψ/2, β = θ/2, and γ = φ/2. The quaternion is
normalized to ensure its unity. That is, the four parameters are
constrained to satisfy the following condition [13]:
q02 + q12 + q22 + q32 = 1.
The normalized unit quaternion serves as the initial unit
quaternion in the dynamic attitude estimation phase.
Dynamic Attitude Estimation Phase: During the dynamic
attitude estimation phase, the IMUPEN is rotated during a
motion. The rotation always involves translational motion.
Therefore, the acceleration measurements are no longer reliable
for the orientation estimation. The angular velocities measured
from the gyroscopes are then used to determine the dynamic
orientation during a motion. Once the initial unit quaternion
of the IMUPEN’s orientation is obtained in the prior static
attitude estimation phase, we can use the following equation
to obtain the quaternion at each time step for the orientation
angles within the dynamic attitude estimation phase by using
the filtered angular velocity signals:
 
1
q(k + 1) = exp Ω(k)Ts q(k) (16)
2 where k is the time steps in the dynamic attitude estimation
where
q(k) = [q0 (k), q1 (k), q2 (k), q3 (k)]T
⎡ ⎤
0 −ωbx (k) −ωby (k) −ωbz (k)
⎢ ωbx (k) 0 ωbz (k) −ωby (k) ⎥
Ω(k) = ⎣ ⎦
ωby (k) −ωbz (k) 0 ωbx (k)
ωbz (k) ωby (k) −ωbx (k) 0 subtracted from the filtered acceleration signals to obtain the
and Ts is the system’s sampling time (Ts = 1/fs ). The afore-
mentioned equation is then expanded as a first-order Taylor
series. For details about the quaternion, please refer to [13].
Accordingly, the dynamic orientation of the IMUPEN can be
obtained by the expansion.
Posterior Static Attitude Estimation Phase: In the posterior
static attitude estimation phase, the roll angle (φ) and pitch
angle (θ) of the IMUPEN can also be derived directly from the
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3513
filtered acceleration signals via (10)–(13). Then, the yaw angle
(ψ) is set according to the quaternion representation of the last
time step in the dynamic attitude estimation phase. The yaw
angle (ψ) is equal to
 
2q1 q2 + 2q0 q3
ψ = tan−1 . (17)
2q02 + 2q12 − 1
After the Euler angles (φ, θ, ψ) of the posterior static attitude
estimation phase are obtained, the corresponding quaternion
representation of the posterior static attitude estimation phase
can be found via (14).
Orientation Error Compensation: Due to inaccurate estima-
tion of the orientation angles, orientation errors are inevitable.
Particularly, the integration of the drift errors from the gyro-
scopes causes a cumulative error that is extremely large after a
time interval. After the motion of the IMUPEN is completed,
the orientation angles obtained in the posterior static attitude
estimation phase can be used to compensate the orientation
error within the dynamic attitude estimation phase. In this
paper, we developed an orientation error compensation method
to compensate the IMUPEN’s orientation error. First, we model
the orientation error accumulation by a linear function in the
(15) quaternion space. By finding the difference between the last
quaternion representation of the dynamic attitude estimation
phase and the first quaternion representation from the posterior
static attitude estimation phase, the slope of the linear error
model can be obtained by (18). The offset term of the linear
error model is set to zero
q(tend ) − q(tend + 1)
m= (18)
tend − tstart
where m = [m0 , m1 , m2 , m3 ]T represents the slopes of the
four components of the quaternion and tstart and tend represent
the start and end time indices of the dynamic attitude estimation
phase. Once the linear error model is derived, the error caused
by the drift can be compensated by the following equation:
q(k) = q(k) − mk (19)
phase. Fig. 5 shows an illustrative example of the proposed
orientation error compensation method.
C. Coordinate Transformation and Gravity Compensation
Due to the fact that the output of an accelerometer always
has an offset (1g) because of local gravity, this offset must be
acceleration generated by motion alone. Since the orientation of
the IMUPEN changes dynamically during a motion to perform
the aforementioned subtraction, all the filtered acceleration sig-
nals have to transfer from the body coordinate to the reference
coordinate. The coordinate system of the IMUPEN is shown
in Fig. 6. To transform the acceleration from the body coor-
dinate to the reference coordinate, we need to derive a trans-
formation matrix based on the quaternion that represents the
IMUPEN’s orientation in the reference coordinate. To derive
 3514 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 57, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2010

Fig. 5. Illustrative example of the proposed orientation error compensation method. (a) Quaternion before the orientation error compensation. (b) Quaternion
after the orientation error compensation.

bases for R3 . With the aforementioned quaternion expression,

a rotation operation can be written in the following form:

vr = qvb q ∗ = Tvb (21)

where q ∗ denotes the conjugate of q, T is the transformation

matrix, vb is the vector expressed in the body coordinate, and
vr is the vector expressed in the reference coordinate. If we
replace vb with a 3 × 3 identity matrix, the transformation
matrix in the quaternion can be derived as follows:

T = (q02 −uT u)I+2uuT −2q0 [u×]

⎡ 2 2 2 2 ⎤
q0 +q1 −q2 −q3 2(q1 q2 −q0 q3 ) 2(q1 q3 +q0 q2 )
=⎣ 2(q1 q2 +q0 q3 ) q02 −q12 +q22 −q32 2(q2 q3 −q0 q1 ) ⎦
2(q1 q3 −q0 q2 ) 2(q2 q3 +q0 q1 ) q02 −q12 −q22 +q32
(22)

Fig. 6. Coordinate transformation between the body coordinate and the refer- where I ∈ R3×3 ⎤is an identity matrix and [u×] =
⎡
ence coordinate. Rx : Roll angle. Ry : Pitch angle. Rz : Yaw angle. 0 −q3 q2
⎣ q3 0 −q1 ⎦. With the transformation matrix T, we
the transformation matrix, the quaternion is written in the fol- −q2 q1 0
lowing special expression that comprises a scalar and a vector can transfer the filtered acceleration signals from the body
part: coordinate to the reference coordinate through
q = q0 + u (20) Ar = TAb (23)

where u = q1 i + q2 j + q3 k. q0 , q1 , q2 , and q3 are all real where Ab = [Abx , Aby , Abz ]T is the filtered acceleration in the
numbers, and i, j, and k represent the standard orthonormal body coordinate and Ar = [Arx , Ary , Arz ]T is the transformed

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WANG et al.: IMUPEN WITH A TRAJECTORY RECONSTRUCTION ALGORITHM AND ITS APPLICATIONS
acceleration in the reference coordinate. The compensated ac-
celeration vectors in the reference coordinate generated from
the pen motion are then expressed as follows:
A = Ar − G
where A = [Ax , Ay , Az ]T is the compensated acceleration in
the reference coordinate and G = [0, 0, 1]T is the gravitational
acceleration in the reference coordinate.
D. Position Estimation
The velocities and positions of the IMUPEN in a motion can
be obtained through the single integral and double integral of
the compensated acceleration signals, respectively. Ideally, the
acceleration should be zero when the IMUPEN is stationary.
However, in practice, the acceleration measurements are not
always equal to zero when the IMUPEN is stationary due to
the inherent sensor noise and drift which may originate from
temperature changes and sensor imperfections. Besides the
noise and drift, when the IMUPEN is held by a user, his/her
unconscious trembles may cause relatively small variations in
acceleration. If we integrate all the compensated acceleration
signals, all these inevitable small errors would be accumu-
lated. To minimize this undesirable error accumulation, we
developed an effective position estimation algorithm, named
MAD switch. The concept of the MAD switch is to integrate
acceleration measurements only when the IMUPEN is moving
and to reset the velocity to zero when the IMUPEN is stationary.
This can prevent undesired error accumulation. To determine
whether the IMUPEN is stationary or in motion, two important
thresholds are defined in the MAD switch: 1) an acceleration
magnitude threshold and 2) a velocity magnitude threshold.
The underlying reason for using the two aforementioned
thresholds is elaborated as follows. To produce or stop a motion,
a user has to exert force on the IMUPEN. Hence, it is straight-
forward to set an acceleration threshold to determine whether
the IMUPEN is in motion. However, between the start and end
of a motion, it is possible that the IMUPEN may move at a
fixed speed momentarily when the acceleration measurement is
fairly close to zero. If we only use the acceleration threshold,
we would make a huge mistake by taking the moving IMUPEN
a stationary one. Thus, there is a need to define the velocity
magnitude threshold to avoid such a mistake.
The MAD switch consists of three individual switches, and
each switch is responsible for one axis of the acceleration in the
reference coordinate. The switches are mutually independent
and operatively identical to one another. That is, the magni-
tudes and magnitude thresholds for each axis are calculated
independently. The two thresholds for each switch are adjusted
adaptively according to different writing conditions, and the
IMUPEN is regarded as stationary when acceleration and ve-
locity measurements are both below their respective thresholds.
There are three phases in the operational procedure of each
switch: 1) turning on the switch; 2) finding the velocity mag-
nitude threshold adaptively; and 3) turning off the switch. After
the MAD switch is applied to reject the undesired errors, the
final acceleration signals are obtained. The detailed description
of the procedure is given hereinafter.
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3515
1) Turning on the Switch: At first, the switches of the three
axes are all turned off and are waiting to be turned on. The
magnitude of the compensated acceleration signals of each axis
is defined as
(24)
EAi (k) = |Ai (k)| (25)
where Ai (k) and EAi (k) are the compensated acceleration and
the compensated acceleration magnitude of the i-axis, respec-
tively, k denotes the time steps, and i denotes the X-, Y -, or
Z-axis of the reference coordinate. The acceleration magnitude
threshold is determined through the following equation by
finding the maximum acceleration magnitude in the beginning
of a motion, tinitial , where the IMUPEN is stationary:
TAi = KA max (EAi (k)) (26)
k
where k is the time steps in the interval of tinitial , TAi is
the adaptive acceleration magnitude threshold of the i-axis for
the compensated acceleration signals, and KA is an empirical
value which is equal to two in this paper. Once the acceleration
magnitude of one axis exceeds TAi , a motion in that axis is said
to be detected, and the dynamic switch of that axis is turned on.
That is, the start point of the integration interval of each axis of
the compensated acceleration can be determined based on the
individual TAi of each axis.
2) Finding the Velocity Magnitude Threshold Adaptively:
Right after the dynamic switch is turned on, it will then keep
looking for the maximum magnitude of velocity for setting the
velocity threshold while integrating the compensated accelera-
tion signals. Because each switch for each axis is mutually inde-
pendent, the velocity magnitude is also calculated individually
for each axis by the following equation:
EV i (k) = |Vi (k)| (27)
where Vi (k) and EV i (k) are the velocity and the velocity mag-
nitude of each axis, respectively, k denotes the time steps, and
i denotes the X-, Y -, or Z-axis of the reference coordinate. To
find the maximum velocity magnitude, we allocate a variable,
EV i,max , to keep the maximum-so-far velocity. If a successive
velocity is smaller than the maximum-so-far velocity, the maxi-
mum velocity magnitude is then set to be that maximum-so-far
value, and the adaptive velocity magnitude threshold of each
axis can be obtained by
TV i = KV EV i,max (k) (28)
where k is the time steps in the integration interval, TV i is the
adaptive velocity magnitude threshold of the i-axis, and KV is
an empirical value which is equal to 0.5 in this paper.
3) Turning off the Switch: If the magnitude of the com-
pensated acceleration and the corresponding velocity are both
below their respective thresholds, the switch is then turned
off, and the velocity is reset to zero to prevent further error
accumulation. Otherwise, the integration continues. That is,
the end point of the integration interval of each axis of the
compensated acceleration is determined by both TAi and TV i
of each axis simultaneously.
 3516
Fig. 7. Flowchart of the MAD switch method.
The flowchart of the MAD switch is shown in Fig. 7. After
applying the MAD switch, we can obtain the final acceleration
signals as well as velocities and positions. For a motion with
pauses, there will be multiple integration intervals over the
final acceleration signals. Therefore, error accumulation can be
significantly reduced by dynamically turning the switch on and
off according to a user’s motions.
E. Summary of the Trajectory Reconstruction Algorithm
We now summarize the proposed trajectory reconstruction
algorithm in the following steps.
Step 1: Collect the raw data of the accelerometer and
gyroscopes.
Step 2: Calibrate the accelerometer and gyroscopes.
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 57, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2010
Step 3: Filter the high-frequency noise of the raw data
measured by the inertial sensors by a moving average
low-pass filter.
Step 4: Estimate the orientation of the IMUPEN.
Substep 1: Detect the rotation interval.
Substep 2: Estimate the prior static orientation.
Substep 3: Estimate the dynamic orientation.
Substep 4: Estimate the posterior static orientation.
Substep 5: Compensate the dynamic orientation error.
Step 5: Transform the coordinate systems from the body
coordinate to the reference coordinate.
Step 6: Remove the gravitational acceleration for the trans-
formed acceleration.
Step 7: Estimate the position or trajectory of the IMUPEN
via the MAD switch method.
IV. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS
The effectiveness of the IMUPEN and its associated tra-
jectory reconstruction algorithm is validated by the following
experiments: 1) motion trajectory reconstruction and 2) hand-
written digit recognition. In the handwritten digit recognition,
two experiments were designed to demonstrate the effective-
ness of the IMUPEN and its associated trajectory reconstruction
algorithm. The first experiment was restricted to an LCD touch
panel whose size is 261.1 mm × 163.2 mm, while the second
experiment allowed users to write digits without any ambit re-
striction. The acceleration and angular velocity data utilized in
our experiments were collected using the LIS3L02AQ3 triaxial
accelerometer, ADXRS300 uniaxial gyroscope, and IDG-300
biaxial gyroscope with a microcontroller (C8051F206) and a
wireless transceiver (nRF2401) on the portable pen-type board.
The output signals of the accelerometer and gyroscopes are all
sampled at 100 Hz by a 12-b AD converter. Our experiments
were performed on a PC running Microsoft Windows Vista
operating system with an AMD Athlon Dual Core Processor
4800+ and 2-GB RAM. Fig. 8 shows the aforementioned three
experimental settings.
A. Motion Trajectory Reconstruction
In this experiment, we performed two types of mechanical
motions generated by a 6-DOF motion platform shown in
Fig. 8(a) to validate the effectiveness of the trajectory re-
construction algorithm. The platform can provide repeatable
reference motion trajectories for trajectory reconstruction tasks.
During the experiment, the IMUPEN was fixed on a leveled sur-
face of the platform. Subsequently, we can set the reference mo-
tion path through the GUI of the platform. Two 2-D reference
motions, drawing a square and drawing a circle, are generated
by the platform to evaluate the performance of the trajectory
reconstruction algorithm. In this experiment, the orientation of
the IMUPEN was kept invariant since the IMUPEN was fixed
on the platform without any rotation. The platform is con-
trolled by high-precision dc motors and consists of the follow-
ing three components: a Newport RGV100 precision rotation
stage, a Newport MTM100CC1 long-travel steel linear stage,
and a Newport IMS300CC high-performance long-travel linear
WANG et al.: IMUPEN WITH A TRAJECTORY RECONSTRUCTION ALGORITHM AND ITS APPLICATIONS
Fig. 8. Three experimental settings. (a) The 6-DOF motion platform used for
the trajectory reconstruction test. (b) Handwriting using a tablet digitizer pen
and the IMUPEN on an LCD touch panel. (c) Handwriting using the IMUPEN
without writing ambit limitation.
stage. The detailed specifications of the stages can be found
in [25].
In this experiment, each side of the square reference motion
and the radius of the circular reference motion are 26 and 13 cm,
respectively. The acceleration at each procedure of the proposed
trajectory reconstruction procedure for the square motion is
shown in Fig. 9. Fig. 9(a) shows the raw data collected from
the triaxial accelerometer. Because the IMUPEN was mounted
parallel to the leveled surface, the acceleration of the Z-axis
of the body coordinate is +1g when the IMUPEN is kept
stationary. That is, the Earth’s gravity is parallel to the Z-axis
of the body coordinate, and only the acceleration of the X-
and Y -axes of the body coordinate will vary with the motion
of the platform. The acceleration signals shown in Fig. 9(b)
were filtered via the moving average filter to reduce the high-
frequency noise. Subsequently, the acceleration signals in the
body coordinate were transformed into the reference coordi-
nate. From the Z-axis reading of the accelerometer that equals
−1g, we found that the direction of the Z-axis of the body
coordinate is opposite to that of the reference coordinate. The
acceleration signals before and after the gravity compensation
are shown in Fig. 9(c) and (d), respectively. Finally, the final
acceleration signals obtained by applying the MAD switch to
the compensated acceleration signals for the square motion are
shown in Fig. 10. The final acceleration signals were doubly
integrated to generate the moving trajectory of the IMUPEN
shown in Fig. 11(a).
The difference between the reference trajectory generated by
the platform and the reconstructed trajectory generated by the
proposed trajectory reconstruction algorithm is used to evaluate
our proposed approach. We define an absolute position error
(APE) (denoted as ea ) and a relative position error (RPE)
(denoted as er ) calculated at a given travel time to indicate the
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3517
difference between the trajectories. The formulas are expressed
as follows:
ea (nΔt) = |pref (nΔt)−pact (nΔt)| (29)
ea (nΔt)
er (nΔt) = 
n ×100% (30)
|pref (mΔt)−pref ((m−1)Δt)|
m=1
where n is the number of time steps Δt, and pref and pact are
the reference and reconstructed trajectories, respectively. The
average APE (ea_mean ) and average RPE (er_mean ) are defined
as follows:
N
1 
ea_mean = ea (nΔt) (31)
N n=1
N
1 
er_mean = er (nΔt) (32)
N n=1
where N is the number of trajectory positions.
The average APEs between the reference and reconstructed
trajectories with the proposed trajectory reconstruction algo-
rithm for drawing a square and a circle are 2.55 and 2.44 cm,
respectively. The average RPEs between the reference and
reconstructed trajectories with the proposed trajectory recon-
struction algorithm for drawing a square and a circle are 4.70%
and 3.13%, respectively. To validate the effectiveness of the
MAD switch, we compared another switch, called start–stop
switch [2], for the same motion. The results of the reconstructed
trajectories of the two switches shown in Fig. 11 validate the
superior performance of the MAD switch. The performance
comparisons of the two switches are summarized in Table I. The
MAD switch has an improved performance over the start–stop
switch for drawing a square and a circle by 37.75% and 3.61%,
respectively.
B. Handwritten Digit Recognition
In the handwritten digit recognition, two experiments were
designed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the IMUPEN and
its associated trajectory reconstruction algorithm. The purpose
of the experiments is to compare the recognition rate of hand-
written digit trajectories generated by a commercial product
with those reconstructed by the IMUPEN. The writing ambits
for the two experiments were different. The first experiment
was restricted to an LCD touch panel whose size is 261.1 mm ×
163.2 mm, while the second experiment allowed users to write
digits without any ambit restriction. A total of 20 participants
were invited to participate in the experiments, 10 for each
experiment. In each experiment, the participants were asked to
write 10 digits (from 0 to 9), and each digit was to be written
10 times. Therefore, a total of 1000(= 10 × 10 × 10) handwrit-
ten digit trajectories were generated for each experiment. The
handwriting recognizer of the Vista tablet PC was employed
as the recognizer for the handwriting trajectories. An online
GUI written in Matlab was developed to perform the following
tasks: 1) signal collection, 2) trajectory reconstruction, 3) trans-
formation of trajectories into images, and 4) sending images
 3518 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 57, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2010

Fig. 9. Acceleration at each procedure of the proposed trajectory reconstruction algorithm for the square motion. (a) Raw data. (b) Filtered acceleration in the
body coordinate. (c) Filtered acceleration in the reference coordinate. (d) Compensated acceleration.

to the recognizer for digit recognition. Fig. 8(b) and (c) shows
the GUI and the experimental setups for the handwritten digit
recognition experiments.
Digit Trajectory Comparison Between Tablet Digitizer Pen
and the IMUPEN: In this experiment, the Wacom Cintiq
12WX interactive pen display was selected to compare its
handwritten digit recognition performance with that of our
IMUPEN and the associated trajectory reconstruction algo-
rithm. The basic components of the Wacom Cintiq 12WX
interactive pen display include a pen tablet internally mounted
behind a thin-film transistor color display and a tablet digitizer
pen. In order to generate the trajectory for the same motion

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WANG et al.: IMUPEN WITH A TRAJECTORY RECONSTRUCTION ALGORITHM AND ITS APPLICATIONS 3519

Fig. 10. Final acceleration signals obtained by applying the MAD switch to the compensated acceleration signals for the square motion. (a) X-axis. (b) Y -axis.
(c) Z-axis. (The region with a gray color and the region with no color represent that the switch is turned off and on, respectively.)

Fig. 11. Results of the trajectory reconstruction. (a) Square shape. (b) Circle shape. Black color: Reference trajectory. Red color: With no switch. Green
color: Start–stop switch. Blue color: MAD switch.

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 3520
TABLE I
P ERFORMANCE C OMPARISONS OF AVERAGE RPE B ETWEEN THE
R EFERENCE AND R ECONSTRUCTED T RAJECTORIES T HROUGH
D IFFERENT S WITCHES FOR THE S QUARE AND C IRCLE S HAPES
Fig. 12. Trajectories of the ten digits. (a) Pictorial digit trajectories. (b) Digit
trajectories using the tablet digitizer pen. (c) Digit trajectories reconstructed
using the IMUPEN and its associated trajectory reconstruction algorithm.
TABLE II
C ONFUSION M ATRIX FOR H ANDWRITTEN D IGIT R ECOGNITION
U SING THE TABLET D IGITIZER P EN
using two different pens, we bound the pens together as shown
in Fig. 8(b). We asked all the participants to complete each digit
in one stroke and follow the pictorial trajectories of the digits
shown in Fig. 12(a). All the participants were asked to write
the digits using the pen to get used to it. When a participant
wrote a digit using the tablet digitizer pen on the LCD touch
panel, the corresponding coordinates of the trajectory were
obtained via the tablet sensors. However, the coordinates of
the trajectory were obtained via the proposed trajectory recon-
struction algorithm when the IMUPEN was used. Fig. 12(b)
and (c) shows the digit trajectories that were collected from
a participant using the tablet digitizer pen and the IMUPEN,
respectively. The confusion matrices for the handwritten digit
recognition using the tablet digitizer pen and the IMUPEN are
shown in Tables II and III, respectively. The recognition rates
of the digit trajectories using the tablet digitizer pen and the
IMUPEN were 97.2% and 90.4%, respectively. Although
the tablet digitizer pen performs better than the IMUPEN for the
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 57, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2010
TABLE III
C ONFUSION M ATRIX FOR H ANDWRITTEN D IGIT R ECOGNITION
U SING THE IMUPEN
TABLE IV
C ONFUSION M ATRIX FOR H ANDWRITTEN D IGIT R ECOGNITION
U SING THE IMUPEN W ITH ITS A SSOCIATED T RAJECTORY
R ECONSTRUCTION A LGORITHM
handwriting recognition, the effectiveness of the IMUPEN and
its associated reconstruction algorithm has been successfully
validated by its high average recognition rate.
Handwritten Digit Recognition via the IMUPEN: In this
experiment, participants were asked to write digits using the
IMUPEN without ambit restrictions. The experiment setup is
shown in Fig. 8(c). The proposed trajectory reconstruction
algorithm was utilized to reconstruct the trajectory based on the
angular velocities and accelerations generated by the IMUPEN
during handwriting motions. The reconstructed digit trajecto-
ries for each participant were recognized by the recognizer of
the Vista tablet PC. The confusion matrix for handwritten digit
recognition using the IMUPEN with the proposed trajectory
reconstruction algorithm is shown in Table IV. The recognition
rate was about 94.6%. Compared with the previous experiment,
we can see that the recognition rate can improve if there is no
limitation on writing ambits.
V. C ONCLUSION
A systematic framework of the trajectory reconstruction of
motions for the IMUPEN has been presented in this paper. The
acceleration and gyroscope measurements are collected from
the inertial sensor module mounted on the pen-type board via
wireless communications. The proposed trajectory reconstruc-
tion algorithm consists of data collection, signal preprocessing,
and trajectory reconstruction. To obtain better trajectory recon-
struction, we have developed an orientation error compensation
WANG et al.: IMUPEN WITH A TRAJECTORY RECONSTRUCTION ALGORITHM AND ITS APPLICATIONS
method to reduce the orientation errors and the MAD switch
so as to minimize the undesirable error accumulation. In the
motion trajectory reconstruction experiments, the trajectory
reconstructed by our algorithm is close to the desired trajectory.
In the handwriting digit recognition application, the overall
recognition accuracy is 90.4% with a limited writing ambit and
94.6% without any writing restriction. The effectiveness of the
IMUPEN and its trajectory reconstruction algorithm has been
successfully validated by the experiments. We believe that the
IMUPEN and its associated trajectory reconstruction algorithm
can be regarded as a novel and effective HCI device.
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Jeen-Shing Wang (S’94–M’02) received the B.S.
and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the
University of Missouri, Columbia, in 1996 and 1997,
respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from Purdue Uni-
versity, West Lafayette, IN, in 2001.
He is currently an Associate Professor with
the Department of Electrical Engineering, Na-
tional Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan.
His research interests include computational intel-
ligence, intelligent control, clustering analysis, and
optimization.
Yu-Liang Hsu received the B.S. degree in auto-
matic control engineering from Feng Chia Univer-
sity, Taichung, Taiwan, in 2004 and the M.S. degree
in electrical engineering from the National Cheng
Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan, in 2007. He is
currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in elec-
trical engineering in the Department of Electrical
Engineering, National Cheng Kung University.
His research interests include intelligent control,
nonlinear system identification, and inertial sensing.
Jiun-Nan Liu received the B.S. degree in aeronau-
tics and astronautics and the M.S. degree in electrical
engineering from the National Cheng Kung Univer-
sity, Tainan, Taiwan, in 2007 and 2009, respectively.
He is currently with the Department of Electrical
Engineering, National Cheng Kung University. His
research interests include signal processing and iner-
tial sensing.