Mobile units with fexible-retractable peripherals

• US 20030050019A1
• Filed: 09/07/2001
• Published: 03/13/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 09/07/2001
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Eric M. Dowling, Linda Joan Dowling
• Original Assignee: Eric M. Dowling, Linda Joan Dowling
• Inventors: Dowling, Eric Morgan, Dowling, Linda Joan
• Application Number:
  US09/949,533
• Publication Number:
  US 20030050019A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/575.1
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 1/088 with parts of the receiver detachable or collapsible
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 1/3833 Hand-held transceivers
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/0235 Slidable or telescopic telephones, i.e. with a relative translation movement of the body parts; Telephones using a combination of translation and other relative motions of the body parts
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/0268 including a flexible display panel
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/72412 using two-way short-range wireless interfaces
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2250/02 including a Bluetooth interface
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2250/16 including more than one display unit

Abstract

A mobile unit such as a smart phone is augmented with one or more flexible-retractable peripherals in order to allow the mobile unit provide a non-area-constrained user interface to the user. For example, a smart phone provides an area-constrained and device-specific user interface to the user while the user is mobile. When the user wishes to work on desktop applications, a roller-mounted and retractable keyboard and LPD (liquid polymer display) are extended from the smart phone to provide a non-area constrained user interface. This allows a hand-held smart phone to optionally function as a laptop/desktop computer. The flexible-retractable peripherals may be built directly into the smart phone or may be implemented as stand-alone peripherals coupled to the smart phone using wired or wireless connections such as Bluetooth™ connections.

Claims

1. A flexible-retractable peripheral system comprising:

a flexible-retractable peripheral surface selected from the group consisting of a display and a keyboard;

a coupling that couples signals to and/or from the peripheral to a hand-held mobile computing device.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising:

a linked support member with movable links that can be tightened to make the flexible-retractable peripheral surface rigid in at least a linear dimension.

3. The system of claim 1, further comprising:

a stand-alone peripheral enclosure that houses the flexible-retractable peripheral system; and

wherein the coupling further comprises a short range wireless transceiver.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the transceiver operates according to a personal area networking protocol.

5. The system of claim 4, further comprising:

a video decoder circuit;

wherein the flexible-retractable peripheral surface comprises a display surface for video program viewing.

6. The system of claim 3, further comprising an optical isolator that optically couples the flexible-retractable peripheral to the stand-alone peripheral enclosure.

7. The system of claim 3, further comprising:

a vehicle;

wherein the stand-alone peripheral enclosure is mounted into a portion of the vehicle and is able to provide the flexible-retractable peripheral for use by a vehicle passenger.

8. A hand-held mobile unit comprising:

a processor;

a memory;

an area-constrained user interface that provides user input and/or output to the hand-held mobile unit;

a flexible-retractable peripheral selected from the group consisting of a display and a keyboard;

a coupling that selectively couples signals between the flexible-retractable peripheral and the processor; and

a non-area constrained user interface;

wherein the hand-held mobile unit selectively provides the area-constrained user interface and/or the non-area constrained user interface depending on an operating mode of the hand-held mobile unit.

9. The hand-held mobile unit of claim 8 wherein the hand-held mobile unit comprises both the flexible-retractable display and the flexible-retractable keyboard.

10. The hand-held mobile unit of claim 8 wherein the area-constrained user interface includes an input device that is used as a mouse-pointing device for the non-area constrained user interface.

11. The hand-held mobile unit of claim 8 wherein the flexible-retractable peripheral is attached to the hand-held unit by a hinged support structure.

12. The hand-held mobile unit of claim 8 wherein the flexible-retractable peripheral 1 is attached to the hand-held unit by a retractable and downward protruding support structure.

13. The hand-held mobile unit of claim 8, further comprising:

a linked support member with movable links that can be tightened to make the flexible-retractable peripheral rigid in at least a linear dimension.

14. The hand-held mobile unit of claim 8, further comprising:

a wide area network air interface module to support wireless network communications.

15. The hand-held mobile unit of claim 8, further comprising:

a local area network air interface module to support wireless personal area network communications.

16. For use in a stand-alone flexible-retractable peripheral system, a method comprising:

extending a flexible-retractable peripheral, the flexible-retractable peripheral being a selected from the group consisting of a display and a keyboard;

advertising a service via a wireless link, the advertisement indicative of a peripheral service provided by the extended flexible-retractable peripheral;

engaging in a service discovery protocol sequence with a mobile unit via a short-range wireless connection;

coupling the flexible-retractable peripheral service to the mobile unit; and

providing an input and/or output peripheral service to the mobile unit using the extended surface of the flexible-retractable peripheral.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the advertising of the service is performed automatically in response to the act of extending.

18. The method of claim 16, wherein the act of engaging in service discovery further comprises:

coupling a message to an external network server;

supporting a session connection between the mobile unit and the external network server;

whereby the mobile unit and the network server engage in an admission protocol to determine whether the mobile unit will be granted access to the flexible-retractable peripheral service.

19. The method of claim 16, wherein the stand-alone flexible-retractable peripheral system is vehicle-mounted.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein the stand-alone flexible-retractable peripheral service supports video program viewing.