Highly sensitive inertial mouse

• US 20060164393A1
• Filed: 01/24/2005
• Published: 07/27/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 01/24/2005
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Chic Technology Corporation, Ching-Hsing Luo
• Original Assignee: Chic Technology Corporation, Ching-Hsing Luo
• Inventors: Luo, Ching-Hsing, Wu, Chung-Min
• Application Number:
  US11/039,800
• Publication Number:
  US 20060164393A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 345/163
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0346 with detection of the device orientation or free movement in a 3D space, e.g. 3D mice, 6-DOF [six degrees of freedom] pointers using gyroscopes, accelerometers or tilt-sensors
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/03543 Mice or pucks G06F3/03541 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0383 Signal control means within the pointing device

Abstract

A highly sensitive inertial mouse is in particular to one using an MEMS(Micro-Electrical-Mechanical System)inertial sensitive principle; the mouse uses MEMS inertial sensitive principle including a two-dimensional or three-dimensional inertial sensors or accelerometers and with the use of signal processing methods such as collecting of data, noise cancellation, setting of threshold of dead zone, tracking of baseline, calculation of displacement and adjustment of sensitivity and so on, enable the MEMS sensor acting as the manufacturing component of a computer mouse; furthermore, the present invention is not only light and energy saving, but also obviates the drawbacks of high power consumption of optics mice or easy-dirt collection of roller mice. Moreover, with the increase in sensitivity, the bottleneck in the manufacturing of inertial mouse is overcome such that the functions of MEMS inertial mouse is very stable and reliable and can be easily used.

Claims

1. A kind of highly sensitive inertial mouse mainly including collecting of data, noise cancellation, setting of threshold of dead zone, tracing of baseline, calculation of displacement and adjustment of sensitivity as signal processing methods as characterized:

collecting of data—

the signal provided by the inertial sensor, amplifier and the analog-to-digital converter is transferred to an accurate acceleration data for further signal processing;

noise cancellation—

use all kinds of noise cancellation techniques in order to highly decrease internal and external noise and increase sensitivity;

setting of threshold of dead zone—

set at the upper and lower range of the baseline at zero acceleration such that the acceleration noise within the threshold cannot be used for displacement calculation, put acceleration and displacement to be zero and the zone within the threshold is known as the dead zone and unnecessary jitters caused by noise are eliminated in the dead zone;

the setting of the threshold can be static and dynamic;

tracing of baseline—

use all kinds of techniques for dynamic tracing of baseline of inertial sensor at zero acceleration in order to eliminate drift movement of the baseline of the inertial sensor itself and caused by variations in the mouse operation surface such as to avoid miscalculations and unexpected displacements;

calculation of displacement—

calculation of displacement starts as soon as signal exits the threshold of dead zone and setting of threshold of dead zone is cancelled whether the succeeding signal is in or out the threshold of dead zone and many kinds of techniques are applied to detect if the action is completed to return to setting of threshold of dead zone;

one inertial sensor can only detect translational acceleration and is only appropriate to exactly calculate translational displacement and it is necessary to further detect angular acceleration in order to calculate non-translational displacement or the displacement containing angular acceleration;

adjustment of sensitivity—

a transfer function is set between the inertial displacement and the computer'"'"'s cursor such that a small movement range of the inertial mouse can be relatively shown as a large movement range on the computer'"'"'s screen and with high resolution.

2. As mentioned in claim 1 of a highly sensitive inertial mouse, wherein data collecting is to take the frequency signal obtained from analog-to-digital converter and apply counting method to collect content from the counter at a certain fixed time in order to get acceleration data for further signal processing.

3. As mentioned in claim 1 of a highly sensitive inertial mouse, wherein data collecting is to take the pulse width signal obtained from analog-to-digital converter and apply counting method in order to convert pulse width to digital data signal for further acceleration calculation and signal processing.

4. As mentioned in claim 1 of a highly sensitive inertial mouse, wherein data collecting is to transform digital serial signal obtained from analog-to-digital converter into parallel signal whereby data is collected for further acceleration calculation and signal processing.

5. As mentioned in claim 1 of a highly sensitive inertial mouse, wherein data collecting is to collect the data from the digital parallel signal obtained from analog-to-digital converter for further acceleration calculation and signal processing.

6. As mentioned in claim 1 of a highly sensitive inertial mouse, wherein noise cancellation uses averaging technique and integrates two or more data to obtain an average value for noise cancellation.

7. As mentioned in claim 1 of a highly sensitive inertial mouse, wherein noise cancellation uses a filter to eliminate high or low frequency noise such as to increase signal-to-noise ratio.

8. As mentioned in claim 1 of a highly sensitive inertial mouse, wherein the static setting of dead zone can be fixedly set at the threshold of dead zone at the upper and lower range of the baseline and the inertial acceleration signal within the threshold is enforced to be zero acceleration.

9. As mentioned in claim 1 of a highly sensitive inertial mouse, wherein the dynamic setting of threshold of dead zone can be set at upper and lower range of baseline according to the changes in noise magnitude and the acceleration signal within the threshold is enforced to be zero acceleration.

10. As mentioned in claim 9 of a highly sensitive inertial mouse, wherein the dynamic threshold can be set as more than or equal to double of standard deviation of noise and if it approaches zero, the value is then enforced to be fixed at a constant.

11. As mentioned in claim 1 of a highly sensitive inertial mouse, wherein the tracing of baseline can use static or dynamic window of two inertial data or more in order to obtain the acceleration data within the threshold of dead zone and applying the first-in-first-out method to enter acceleration data into the window and calculating the average value of data from window as zero acceleration of baseline.

12. As mentioned in claim 1 of a highly sensitive inertial mouse, wherein the tracing of baseline can be made according to the characteristic of the inertial signal having symmetrical area within the upper and lower zone of the baseline or the tiny signal variation within the dead zone (for example, the changing rate of inertial signal), the baseline is retraced after location change of inertial mouse, obviating the phenomenon of variation in baseline surpassing the threshold of dead zone caused by rough operation surface such that the inertial mouse can operate normally under high sensitive detection.

13. As mentioned in claim 1 of a highly sensitive inertial mouse, wherein tracing function is repressed as soon as movement displacement occurs and tracing of baseline starts again when the inertial signal has the almost symmetrical area at the upper and lower range of baseline and the change in the inertial signal is smaller than the multiple of noise standard deviation, if the inertial signal subtracting the saved baseline obtained before the movement displacement occurs still surpasses threshold of dead zone, the saved baseline should be abandoned and the window tracing method mentioned in claim 11 should be applied for tracing of new baseline such that the inertial mouse can operate normally under high sensitive detection.

14. As mentioned in claim 1 of a highly sensitive inertial mouse, wherein displacement calculation can be done according to zone labeling method and when inertial acceleration signal leaves the threshold of dead zone for the first time, the zone label changes from 0 to 1, the label changes to 2 according to the symmetrical characteristic of inertial signal (re-enter the threshold of dead zone) and 3 (leaving the threshold of dead zone for the second time and entering the upper or lower symmetrical zone), when the inertial signal re-enters the threshold of dead zone, the zone label changes from 3 to 0 and when zone label is 0, no displacement calculation is done but tracing of baseline and threshold of dead zone is proceeded, when zone label is not 0, displacement calculation is processed but not tracing of baseline and threshold of dead zone.

15. As mentioned in claim 1 of a highly sensitive inertial mouse, wherein a sign label is needed for setting of zone label of displacement calculation in order to solve the problem of a large signal change causing signal not to stop in zone 2, when zone label is 1 and sign labels of inertial signal changes from positive to negative or from negative to positive, the zone label is enforced as 3 meaning that signal did not stay at zone 2 and went directly to zone 3 such that zone label can operate normally.

16. As mentioned in claim 1 of a highly sensitive inertial mouse, wherein:

the translational displacement of displacement calculation can directly consider the inertial signal as translational acceleration can directly apply familiar integral formula to calculate each dimensional displacement.

17. As mentioned in claim 1 of a highly sensitive inertial mouse, wherein the non-translational displacement or the displacement containing angular acceleration of the displacement calculation the signal detected by the inertial sensor can be treated as translational acceleration, but gyroscope has to be further used to directly detect angular acceleration or use other inertial sensors and placing them at a certain distance on an axis of the coordinate axis to indirectly calculate angular acceleration whose familiar formulae need mutual deduction of two inertial signals located in an coordinate axis, then use the angular acceleration to revise the said translational acceleration above in order to obtain correct translational displacement in each dimension.

18. As mentioned in claim 1 of a highly sensitive inertial mouse, wherein the adjustment of sensitivity is to separate the transfer function of the inertial mouse displacement and the screen cursor displacement into several transfer zones with independent transfer function including a dead zone, linear zone, non-linear zone, displacement limiting zone such that the inertial mouse can be immobile in the dead zone;

and maintain a high sensitivity in the displacement linear zone, in the non-linear zone, the displacement can be greatly enlarged non-linearly;

in the displacement limiting zone, a highly unstable and sensitive displacement conversion can be prevented in order to match habit of computer users.

19. As mentioned in claim 18 of a highly sensitive inertial mouse, wherein:

if adjustment of sensitivity is undertaken under the threshold of dead zone set with acceleration, displacement dead zone is not necessarily set, relatively, if the threshold of dead zone is not set with acceleration, displacement dead zone has to be then set.

20. As mentioned in claim 18 of a highly sensitive inertial mouse, wherein:

the number of zone of the adjustment of sensitivity can be increased, decreased, adjusted, or suppressed depending on the quality of the inertial detection characteristics for a most comfortable use of human.

21. As mentioned in claim 18 of a highly sensitive inertial mouse, wherein:

the transfer function in each transfer zone can use adaptive techniques or pseudo-neural network learning technique to adapt or learn human habits for a best personal transfer function and a most comfortable inertial mouse use.

22. As mentioned in claim 1 of a highly sensitive inertial mouse, wherein:

six said processing principles (collecting of data, noise cancellation, setting of threshold of dead zone, tracing of baseline, calculation of displacement and adjustment of sensitivity) can be used in 1-,2-,3-dimensional displacement detection.

23. As mentioned in claim 22 of a highly sensitive inertial mouse, wherein:

six said signal processing principles (collecting of data, noise cancellation, setting of threshold of dead zone, tracing of baseline, calculation of displacement and adjustment of sensitivity) use in 2-dimensional mouse working on a plane surface, a click or on/off switch is used to automatically determine whether the 2-dimensional mouse leaves off the working plane surface or not, if yes (switch is in off state), the displacement calculation stops and the cursor or mouse in the screen cannot move;

if no, as the switch in the on state, the 2-dimensional mouse works normally on the working surface.

24. As mentioned in claim 22 of a highly sensitive inertial mouse, wherein:

six said signal processing principles (collecting of data, noise cancellation, setting of threshold of dead zone, tracing of baseline, calculation of displacement and adjustment of sensitivity) use in 2-dimensional mouse working on a plane surface, an inertial sensor or displacement sensor is used to detect the 3^rd dimensional movement, if the 2-dimensional mouse leaves off the working plane surface and the 3^rd dimension movement detected by the inertial sensor or displacement sensor is greater than a present threshold, the cursor or mouse in the screen stops moving.