Digitizing Tablet

Synonyms

Digitizer; Graphic tablet; Tablet; Touch-screen tablet

Definition

A digitizing tablet is a sensitive input device that converts a hand-drawn trajectory into a digital online form, which is a sequence. This hand-drawn trajectory may be a signature input, handwriting, or hand-drawn graphics. A digitizing tablet usually consists of an electronic tablet and a pen or a stylus. When the electronic tablet communicates with the pen, it is said to be “active” and in this case the pen contains an electronic circuit; otherwise, the tablet is said to be “passive.” Similar devices dedicated to handwriting or drawing exist. We can distinguish pen digitizers (electronic pens) and interactive whiteboards.

Active digitizing tablets sample the pen trajectory at regular time intervals, generating a time stamp and associated time functions; passive digitizing tablets require dedicated acquisition software to retrieve the sequence of time stamps and associated time functions. When digitizing human...