Google, 3M, Lattice Semiconductor and three more companies join Intel and Wacom as part of Universal Stylus Initiative

Google, 3M Touch Systems, Lattice Semiconductor, Maxeye Smart Technologies, MyScript and Tactual Labs are the newest members of the Universal Stylus Initiative (USI). [caption id=“attachment_4330987” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Image: Universal Stylus Initiative (USI).[/caption] According to a report by Liliputing, it is a universal initiative that tech giants such as **Synaptics** , **Wacom** and **Intel** started a few years ago to simplify things when it comes to the standards for digital pens. The reason for this initiative is that even though the move from resistive touch to the capacitive touch made the consumers less reliant on digital pens, it is still available on the Samsung Galaxy Note series and a number of third-party Windows tablets and convertibles in addition to the Surface line-up from **Microsoft**  which come with digital pens as input devices. The addition of these new members has bumped the total number of companies under USI to be more than 30. The report also points out that USI released its Specification 1.0 back in September of 2016. As part of the specification, a ‘non-proprietary active stylus’ was introduced along with the ability to store the information about the ink colour and the brush stock. This means that users can use the same settings on multiple devices without tweaking or syncing anything. The standard introduces two-way communication between the stylus and the touch-screen device to ensure that other devices don’t interfere.

Another interesting part of the specification was the fact that a single touchscreen device could support up to 6 pens at the same time. The standard adds support for 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity and 9-axis of inertial measurement. Last but not the least, this is the first update from USI after the introduction of the standard back in 2018. This development gives us hope that USI compliant devices will start rolling out in near future with devices from Google, Dell, Lenovo, and Intel.