Alphabet Handwriting Recognition: From Wood-Framed Hydrogel Arrays Design to Machine Learning Decoding

Handwriting recognition is a highly integrated system, demanding hardware to collect handwriting signals and software to deal with input data. Nonetheless, the design of such a system from scratch with sustainable materials and an easily accessible computing network presents significant challenges. In pursuit of this goal, a flexible, and electrically conductive wood-derived hydrogel array is developed as a handwriting input panel, enabling recognizing alphabet handwriting assisted by machine learning technique. For this, lignin extraction-refill, polypyrrole coating, and polyacrylic acid filling, endowing flexibility, and electrical conduction to wood are sequentially implemented. Subsequently, these woods are manufactured into a 5 × 5 array, creating a matrix of signals upon handwriting. Efficient handwritten recognition is then achieved through appropriate manual feature extraction and algorithms with low complexity within a computing network, as demonstrated in this work, the strategic choice of expertise-based feature engineering and simplified algorithms effectively boost the overall model performance on handwriting recognition. With potential adaptability, further applications in customized wearable devices and hands-on healthcare appliances are envisioned.