RECOGNIZING THE MOTION OF TWO OR MORE TOUCHES ON A TOUCH-SENSING SURFACE

• US 20090051671A1
• Filed: 08/21/2008
• Published: 02/26/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 08/22/2007
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Cypress Semiconductor Corporation (Infineon Technologies AG)
• Original Assignee: Cypress Semiconductor Corporation (Infineon Technologies AG)
• Inventors: Konstas, Jason Antony
• Application Number:
  US12/195,989
• Publication Number:
  US 20090051671A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 345/174
• 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

An apparatus and method for recognizing the motion of multiple touches on a touch-sensing surface. In one embodiment, the touch-sensing surface is divided into multiple logical zones. Each of the logical zones has a configurable granularity. The apparatus and method detects multiple substantially simultaneous touches on the surface, and tracks the motions of the touches across the logical zones to identify a multi-touch gesture.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

detecting a plurality of substantially simultaneous touches on a touch-sensing surface that is divided into a plurality of logical zones, each of the logical zones having a configurable granularity; and

tracking motions of the touches across the logical zones to identify a multi-touch gesture.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein tracking motions further comprises:

correlating the motions to a set of rules defining the multi-touch gesture.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein tracking motions further comprises:

detecting a temporal sequence of the logic zones that are activated by the touches.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein tracking motions further comprises:

capturing a start condition of the multi-touch gesture, the start condition defined by a first set of the logical zones activated by the touches; and

detecting an end condition of the multi-touch gesture, the end condition defined by a second set of the logical zones activated by the touches.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein tracking motions further comprises:

determining an end of the multi-touch gesture by detecting a release of one of the touches.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein tracking motions further comprises:

determining an end of the multi-touch gesture by detecting that the touches remain in the same logical zones for a pre-determined period of time.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein tracking motions further comprises:

detecting back-to-back gesturing by detecting at least one of the touches remaining on the touch-sensing surface and at least one of other touches being released.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein detecting a plurality of substantially simultaneous touches further comprising:

for each of the touches, determining one of the logical zones activated by the touch without determining an exact location of the touch.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

detecting the touches generated by one or more of the following operations;

a left-hand operation, a right-hand operation, a single-hand operation, and a dual-hand operation.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the touch-sensing surface is formed by a two-dimensional sensor array and recognition rules for the multi-touch gesture are customized in view of a construction of the two-dimensional sensor array.

11. An apparatus comprising:

a touch-sensing surface to detect a plurality of substantially simultaneous touches, the touch-sensing surface divided into a plurality of logical zones; and

a gesture recognition unit, which receives input from the touch-sensing surface to track motions of the touches across the logical zones for gesture identification, and is configurable to store parameters that define a granularity of each of the logical zones in view of a multi-touch gesture to be identified.

12. The apparatus of claim 11, wherein the gesture recognition unit is configurable to store rules defining the multi-touch gesture and correlate the motions to the rules.

13. The apparatus of claim 11, wherein the gesture recognition unit is configurable to detect a temporal sequence of the logic zones that are activated by the touches.

14. The apparatus of claim 11, wherein the gesture recognition unit is further configurable to capture a start condition of the multi-touch gesture and to detect an end condition of the multi-touch gesture, the start condition defined by a first set of the logical zones activated by the touches and the end condition defined by a second set of the logical zones activated by the touches.

15. The apparatus of claim 11, wherein the gesture recognition unit is further configurable to detect the touches generated by one or more of the following operations:

a left-hand operation, a right-hand operation, a single-hand operation, and a dual-hand operation

16. The apparatus of claim 11, wherein the touch-sensing surface is formed by a two-dimensional sensor array and recognition rules for the multi-touch gesture are customized in view of a construction of the two-dimensional sensor array.

17. The apparatus of claim 11, wherein the touch-sensing surface is a matrix capacitive-sensing surface.

18. A computer readable medium including instructions that, when executed by a processing system, cause the processing system to perform a method, the method comprising:

detecting a plurality of substantially simultaneous touches on a touch-sensing surface that is divided into a plurality of logical zones, each of the logical zones having a configurable granularity; and

tracking motions of the touches across the logical zones to identify a multi-touch gesture.

19. The computer readable medium of claim 18, wherein tracking motions further comprises:

correlating the motions to a set of rules defining the multi-touch gesture.

20. The computer readable medium of claim 18, wherein tracking motions further comprises:

capturing a start condition of the multi-touch gesture, the start condition defined by a first set of the logical zones activated by the touches; and

detecting an end condition of the multi-touch gesture, the end condition defined by a second set of the logical zones activated by the touches.