5-6 Pen Computer

A pen computer is a portable type of personal computer as shown in Figure 5.7, which are very useful for on spot GIS data acquisition at the site.

It can be connected with a mobile telephone (or called cellular telephone) or a public telephone through which the stored data can be tranmitted to the host computer with GIS database.

Because of its light weight, it will be vey useful to carry a pen computer together with a kinematic GPS system to measure geospatial objects which is so called GPS survey, as shown in Figure 5.8.

The pen computer can be also connected with a GPS based total station as shown in Figure 5.9, which has the function of geodetic surveying for spatial objects as well as data input of the attributes at the site in digital form.

The pen computer is designed against water, dust and shock as well as with working range from -5° to 50° C in temperature, which is stronger than the ordinary laptop computer in the open field. This system will replace the conventional plane surveying of analog mapping, which is commonly used in the field.