VIRTUAL KEYBOARD

• US 20010040554A1
• Filed: 01/13/1998
• Published: 11/15/2001
• Est. Priority Date: 02/20/1997
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha (Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha (Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.)
• Inventors: NAKAGAWA, KATSUYA
• Granted Patent: US 7,034,806 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 345/160
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2203/04104 Multi-touch detection in digitiser, i.e. details about the simultaneous detection of a plurality of touching locations, e.g. multiple fingers or pen and finger
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/045 using resistive elements, e.g. a single continuous surface or two parallel surfaces put in contact
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04886 by partitioning the display area of the touch-screen or the surface of the digitising tablet into independently controllable areas, e.g. virtual keyboards or menus

Abstract

The present invention provides virtual keyboard which can be used at the same number of operations as on a conventional keyboard and can allow a natural input operation at a minimized load. The virtual keyboard comprises a liquid crystal display for displaying thereon a keyboard having special keys and general keys, a transparent pressure-sensitive panel superimposed on the display and a computing portion that, when a special key and a general key on a pressure-sensitive panel are pushed at a time, detects the coordinate of a middle point between the two pushed positions from outputs of the pressure-sensitive panel, calculates a general key position from the special key point and the middle point and outputs a code corresponding to that position.

Claims

1. A virtual keyboard comprising a displays for displaying a keyboard, a transparent pressure-sensitive panel disposed on the displays and a processor for receiving information of positions detected and sent in a time sequence from the pressure-sensitive panel when a combination of a general key and a special key in the keyboard is pushed at a time, identifying a position of the pushed general key according to the received position information and outputting a code corresponding to the pushed combination of the special key and the general key.

2. A virtual keyboard as defined in

claim 1

, wherein one of the received position information is a middle position between the pushed positions being selected as a furthest position from the special key in the information of positions detected in a time sequence and the position of the general key is determined by doubling a distance from the special key to the furthest position.