signatures

Robotic arm

The Government of Ontario produces many official documents that require signatures, and for security reasons, these papers cannot for sent by fax or mail for signing. However, the province recently adopted a long-distance signing station that was originally developed with the aid of author Margaret Atwood.

When Margaret Atwood called Matthew Gibson from a hotel room in the spring of 2004, she was in the middle of a grueling, multi-city, multi-country book tour. Knowing she has a 6 a.m. fight to catch, she wondered if there was a better way. She imagined being able to sign books for her fans from afar, and at that moment, she had the seed of an idea that would, years later, become the LongPen Freehand Script Robot.

The company that designed the arms says “LongPen signatures are approved in both the United States and Canada as legal.” For the government’s use, they chose the LongPen BusinessWriter, which allows ink-and-paper documents to remain in the province’s cabinet office at Queen’s Park in Toronto while they are signed from other locations.

source: http://www.canadianmanufacturing.com/design-engineering/motion-control/robotic-arm-extend-authors-signatures-over-cyberspace-10411