Haptic interface

• US 20040239617A1
• Filed: 02/23/2004
• Published: 12/02/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 09/18/2001
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: British Telecommunications PLC (BT Group PLC)
• Original Assignee: British Telecommunications PLC (BT Group PLC)
• Inventors: Hardwick, Andrew John
• Application Number:
  US10/487,444
• Publication Number:
  US 20040239617A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 345/156
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/016 Input arrangements with force or tactile feedback as computer generated output to the user
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 21/001 Teaching or communicating with blind persons G09B21/02 - G09B21/06 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 21/003 using tactile presentation of the information, e.g. Braille displays

Abstract

A haptic output device is associated with a computer or other text reading device. The haptic device is controlled by the computer to react to a users finger position to provide a reaction force which defines characters (for example using Moon alphabet representation by stimulating grooves or ridges on a virtual plane. Feelable texture may be added to standard characters whereby the characters (or other non-standard characters) may be used as short handrepresentration for particular user-selectable words or phrases.

Claims

1. A haptic interface in association with control means, the control means reading alphanumeric data from a text source, converting each character in said text source to a series of control signals defining a virtual surface carrying a tactile readable representation of the text and being responsive to data from the haptic interface to determine position and movement of a user probe around a virtual plane representative of a page in the text source to cause a change in the control signals to effect control of apparent force felt by the user whereby non-visual reading of the text is facilitated.

2. A haptic interface in association with control means as claimed in claim 1 in which the text is represented by a series of apparent grooves in the virtual plane.

3. A haptic interface in association with control means as claimed in claim 1 in which the text is represented by a series of apparent ridges on the virtual plane.

4. A haptic interface in association with control means as claimed in claim 1 in which the representation of text is user selectable to be either a series of apparent ridges on the virtual plane or a series of apparent grooves in the virtual plane.

5. A haptic interface in association with control means as claimed in claim 1 in which the apparent size of each character represented is user selectable whereby character size may be increased for less sensitive users and decreased for more sensitive users.

6. A haptic interface in association with control means as claimed in claim 1 in which characters formed by a plurality of parts have the parts linked by tracing paths in the virtual plane, said paths being of less pronounced displacement with respect to the virtual plane.

7. A haptic interface in association with control means as claimed in claim 1 in which characters are linked to a respective succeeding character and/or a respective preceding character by respective guide paths, said guide paths being of less pronounced displacement with respect to said virtual plane.

8. A haptic interface in association with control means as claimed in claim 1 in which each character is represented by its respective Moon alphabet representation.

9. A haptic interface in association with control means as claimed in claim 1 in which the control means includes data defining a plurality of character representations additional to a standard character set, the control means being responsive to user input to allocate any such character representation to mean a word, phrase or symbol.

10. A haptic interface in association with control means as claimed in claim 9 in which the control means is responsive to user input to store a representation of a non standard character required by the user to represent a word, character, phrase or symbol selected by the user.

11. A haptic interface in association with control means as claimed in claim 1 in which user selectable texture may be added to character representations.

12. A haptic interface in association with control means as claimed in claim 11 in which each texture modified characters may be user assigned to represent a respective word, character, phrase or symbol.