Paranga - Large Ambitions Within a Small Device

Khoa DoBa

Professor Madan

Elements of Writing (T/F)

3/27/11 (Essay 1)

Paranga - Large ambitions within a small device

Paranga is a device that provides ebook users with a sensation of flipping an actual book page. Due to its lightweight, durability, and convenience in purchasing new books, ebook is getting more and more popular for book and newspaper readers because of those various advantages it provides over a traditional paper book. However, there are still many people who still prefer the original paper book because they like the feeling of turning the physical piece of paper. This is when Paranga, a project done by a group of students from Osaka University and Worcester Polytechnic Institute including myself, comes to the rescue.

Five major parts of a Paranga device

So how does Paranga give the users such an experience that no other eBooks can provide? The figure above explains the secret of the device. There are five major parts. The paper roll is the part that provides the page turning sensation. It consists of a metal rod wrapped around by twenty-four pieces of paper (representing twenty four “pages”). The user put his/her finger on the roll and when it is rotated, the paper pieces will move across the user’s finger and give the page flipping sensation. The motor’s role in the device is to rotate the paper roll. The rotating speed of the motor will vary depending on how much the user bends the book. If the user only bends the book slightly, the paper roll will move slowly, allowing a slower flip. Vice versa, if the user wants to flip several pages at once, he or she can bend the book more and the paper roll will move faster. A bend sensor is used to detect how much the user bends the book. Then, a rotary encoder is connected to the motor and the paper roll to detect how many “pages” have been flipped. Finally, the display serves the usual purpose of an eBook, which is displaying the book’s content.

As a Computer Science major, I always seek to...