We present an ongoing project to develop a system to provide field service workers with timely and accurate service information. The system will allow workers to download diagrams or photographs from a host computer’s central database onto a PDA. The workers will be able to annotate the diagrams to reflect work performed, and later upload the annotations to the host computer, where they will be integrated into an updated database. Diagram recognition functionality is distributed between the PDA (which performs low-level shape and handwriting recognition) and the host computer (which performs high-level domain-based diagram recognition). Distributing the functionality offers a number of advantages: it allows the relatively resource-poor PDA to be part of a powerful diagram recognition environment, it allows the use of standardized hardware-based recognition facilities in a domain-based recognition system, and it allows off-line drawing recognition and storage of diagrams, thereby avoiding excessive use of slow or expensive communications channels.

Distributed Digital Sketchbooks