Robots, using machine learning, can now mimic a human's handwriting—inconsistencies, pen pressure, personal flourishes, nuances, and all. Here we review The Handwriting Company's Hemingway robot and the handwriting robot from Brown University.

1. Meet Hemingway:
The AI Robot
Your Handwriting
That Can Copy

2. © 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Title
Text
IntroductionIntroduction
The everyday tasks that humans often take for granted, such as walking and
handwriting, have, until recently, been challenging to program a robot to
do. The Handwriting Company now has a robot that can create beautifully
handwritten communication that mimics the style of an individual's
handwriting while a robot from Brown University can replicate handwriting
from a variety of languages even though it was just trained on Japanese
characters.
Meet Hemingway: The Artificial Intelligence
Robot That Can Copy Your Handwriting

3. © 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Title
Text
IntroductionIntroduction
Achieving this milestone of robotic capabilities was quite a feat for the
researchers and roboticists behind the scenes and the machine
learning algorithms that power the robots’ skills. Let’s review what’s currently
possible today and what might be in store for the future with robots creating
handwritten text.
Meet Hemingway: The Artificial Intelligence
Robot That Can Copy Your Handwriting

4. © 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Hemingway is The Handwriting Company’s robot that can mimic anyone’s style of
handwriting. All that Hemingway’s algorithm needs to mimic an individual’s handwriting is a
sample of handwriting from that person. Not only can Hemingway write faster than a human,
in one example completing the sample text provided in 2 minutes that took the human who
provided it 15, it’s also surprisingly accurate. When a company is trying to deliver a personal
touch to a large group of individuals with handwritten notes, you can imagine how important
this time savings could be.
While script from the same language shares specific characteristics no matter who is doing
the writing, every individual has nuances in their handwriting that makes it unique to them
including the pressure applied by the writing utensil, flourishes to various characters,
inconsistencies and the like. These nuances are picked up by Hemingway's algorithm to
recreate very realistic handwriting samples that make it difficult to discern it was created by a
robot.
Technology Behind Hemingway

5. © 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
The Handwriting Company uses this technology to provide its clients, including corporations,
politicians, and political parties, with handwritten text for marketing purposes. Brides and
grooms have even used it for their wedding invites. The company promises the "automation
of robotics with the creativity of humans.”
While the robotic handwriting doesn’t yet fool a graphologist, who was able to tell automated
handwriting from a human handwriting sample only because the robotic sample lacked a bit
of fluidity, it’s good enough to fool others. Future developments in the works would be to
allow this technology to be used at home and to adjust the style based on emotions that the
communication needs to convey.
Technology Behind Hemingway

6. © 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Researchers at Brown University, including Atsunobu Kotani and Stefanie Tellex, have also
made strides by making a deep-learning algorithm that helped a robot produce handwritten
words and even hand-drawn images.
The Brown University robot was trained to handwrite Japanese characters. After that, it was
able to apply its learning to other languages it had never written before including Greek,
English (print and cursive) and Hindi by merely looking at examples of that writing. To top it
off, it was also able to recreate a handwritten drawing of the Mona Lisa.
Handwriting may seem like it would be simple to learn, but it's quite complex to do so in
reality. Just think about how a child learns to write. It's not enough to show a child a picture of
handwriting; they must receive instructions about how to form each letter.
The roboticists at Brown University split their training system into two models—a local model
that is concerned with the stroke of the pen and a global model that moves the writing utensil
to the next stroke of the character.
Handwriting Robot from Brown University

7. © 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
They fed the algorithm Japanese characters initially and provided some information about
how strokes of a character work. Then, the algorithm took over, used its machine vision and
predictive capabilities to replicate the writing, even in different languages.
Interestingly, in one test, the researchers challenged the robot to replicate the less-then-
precise handwriting of a group of kindergarteners. Although they thought the robot would be
stumped, it duplicated the wobbly writing of humans just learning to handwrite quite easily.
What's next for handwriting technology? One can imagine a future where robots can leave
humans handwritten notes instead of print-offs, but we'll have to wait to see how the
technology evolves.
Handwriting Robot from Brown University

8. © 2017 Bernard Marr , Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
© 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Bernard Marr is an internationally best-selling author, popular keynote speaker, futurist, and a
strategic business & technology advisor to governments and companies. He helps
organisations improve their business performance, use data more intelligently, and
understand the implications of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data,
blockchains, and the Internet of Things.
LinkedIn has ranked Bernard as one of the world’s top 5 business influencers. He is a frequent
contributor to the World Economic Forum and writes a regular column for Forbes. Every day
Bernard actively engages his 1.5 million social media followers and shares content that
reaches millions of readers.
Visit The
Website
© 2017 Bernard Marr , Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
© 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Bernard Marr is an internationally best-selling author, popular keynote speaker, futurist, and a
strategic business & technology advisor to governments and companies. He helps
organisations improve their business performance, use data more intelligently, and
understand the implications of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data,
blockchains, and the Internet of Things.
LinkedIn has ranked Bernard as one of the world’s top 5 business influencers. He is a frequent
contributor to the World Economic Forum and writes a regular column for Forbes. Every day
Bernard actively engages his 1.5 million social media followers and shares content that
reaches millions of readers.
Visit The
Website

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