PaperLink: a technique for hyperlinking from real paper to electronic content

Arai, T., Aust, D., and Hudson, S. E. 1997. PaperLink: a technique for hyperlinking from real paper to electronic content. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, United States, March 22 - 27, 1997). S. Pemberton, Ed. CHI '97. ACM, New York, NY, 327-334.

Abstract: Paper is a very convenient medium for presenting information. It is familiar, flexible, portable, inexpensive, user modifiable, and offers better readability properties than existing electronic displays. However, paper displays are static and do not offer capabilities such as dynamic content, and hyperlinking that can be provided with electronic media. PaperLink is a system which augments paper documents with electronic features. PaperLink uses a highlighter pen augmented with a camera, along with simple computer vision and pattern recognition techniques, to allow a user to make marks on paper which can have associations and meaning in an electronic world, and to "pick up" printed material for use as electronic input. This paper will consider the prototype PaperLink hardware and software system, and its application to hyperlinking from paper to electronic content.