Penveu

History

In 1991 SMART Technologies introduced an Interactive Whiteboard. It was a large touch-sensitive (resistive technology) board mounted on the wall, on which the image from a projector was displayed, that through a USB connection to a computer indicated where the presenter was touching it, allowing the presenter to virtually interact with the computer desktop (as is projected on the board), or to dispense virtual ink to annotate the displayed image. It was not portable, required professional installation and calibration, it worked only when the presenter/teacher is at the board. Other products (Mimio, eBeam) came out after that. Those were “after-market” products that were aimed at working with existing projectors. However, they still required professional installation, calibration, had limited portability once they were installed on the wall, and still restricted the presenter to the board. Some of those products were incorporated into projectors, thus introducing the interactive projector. Interactive projectors once again require professional installation, are less affordable, and would not work with existing projectors.

Interphase Corporation (NASDAQ:INPH) was founded in 1974, and filed for Initial Public Offering in 1984. The company stock has been traded in the NASDAQ since then. The company has been building strage, telecom, and enterprise networking electronic boards in its manufacturing facility, located in Carrollton, Texas. In 2009, the company decided that it needed to branch out to additional markets and applications. In 2010, through a thorough investigation of the interactive whiteboard market, and with a commitment the company made to grow in the computer vision technical direction, penveu was invented. Under a vail of secrecy, the company has developed the concepts and tested them for two years until unveiling the product at the DEMO conference in Santa Clara, California on April 18, 2012. Since then the company continued to develop the product, test it, and on May 30, 2014, released it to the market. The origin of the name penveu is almost comical. Since the product is made of two electronic boards (one in the handheld pen and one in the base station), the engineering department insisted on naming those two boards. One of them was simple to name: the PEN. The other, as explained in the “Technology” section, is a Video Enhancement Unit, and was thus named by its acronym: VEU. From here, the road to naming the entire product PENVEU was short. It also suggests that penveu is “a pen with a view”, which provides a good explanation of the unique operation of the penveu system.

On September 30, 2015, Interphase Corporation announced it has ceased operations and commenced bankruptcy proceedings by filing a voluntary petition for relief under provisions of Chapter 7 of Title 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code to initiate an orderly liquidation of the assets of the Company.

Technology

The core of the penveu technology surrounds a camera located near the tip of the pen, but is implemented in two parts of the penveu system: the PEN, and the VEU. The video signal (VGA) that comes from the computer towards the display device (projector or TV monitor) is intercepted by the VEU box. Over there, visual targets are inserted into that video stream. Those targets include position-encoded information, related to the location of each target within the display area. The targets are inserted as increased brightness in one frame, and reduced brightness in the next frame. Due to the flicker fusion threshold, our eyes will not be able to observe those quick changes, and since the targets in one frame will compensate for the targets in the previous frame, our eyes will only see the “target-free” visual information. The camera in the pen, on the other hand, subtracts consecutive frames. As a result, the camera will only be sensitive to the targets themselves, while ignoring the “human visible” information (the content). There is a powerful Digital signal processor (DSP) in the pen, which calculates the position of the tip based on the information retrieved from the targets detected. In the core of this technology is an engineering discipline from the area of Computer science called Computer Vision. Computer Vision is defined as “Computer vision is a field that includes methods for acquiring, processing, analyzing, and understanding images and, in general, high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical or symbolic information, e.g., in the forms of decisions”. In the penveu case, this translates into the acquisition of the positioning information through the pen camera, and extracting the position of the tip relative to the displayed image based on that information, and then the interaction with the display object at that location or the dispensing on virtual ink at the location. This camera-based technology is also assisted with a MEMS-based inertial system for better accuracy and smoother performance.

As a result of the positioning targeting system being integrated with the displayed image, penveu never requires calibration. Since the only installation required is the connection of the video (VGA) cable from the projector and computer into the penveu system, as well as USB and power—installation is very simple and does not require a professional, and the product is portable. The product works with existing projector or flat panel display, does not require a new projector, and thus is very affordable. Finally, it allows the presenter/teacher to move away from the display and “roam” around the classroom (or conference room), thus increasing interactivity between the presenter, audience, and content, increasing audience engagement.

Patents

The company was granted the first US patent (8,217,997) on 7/10/2012, a second patent (8,446,364) on 5/21/2013, a third patent (8,982,050) on March 17, 2015, a fourth patent (9,024,876) on May 5, 2015, and has more patents (US and international) filed, and expects them to be published in the near future.

Awards

penveu received numerous awards since its introduction into the market. First it received the “Best of InfoComm 2012” award in the “Best New Product for K-12 Education Market” category. In January 2014 it received the 2014 “Innovations in Design and Engineering” award at the Consumer Electronics Show in the “Computer Peripherals” category. Later in June 2014 it received the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) inaugural Best of Show” award. Finally, in September 2014 the penveu team was a finalist in the Tech Titans event at the Technology Inventor category.