METHOD AND DEVICE FOR AN ACOUSTIC SENSOR SWITCH

• US 20110096036A1
• Filed: 10/25/2010
• Published: 04/28/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 10/23/2009
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Jason Mcintosh, Marc Boillot
• Original Assignee: Jason Mcintosh, Marc Boillot
• Inventors: McIntosh, Jason, Boillot, Marc
• Application Number:
  US12/911,638
• Publication Number:
  US 20110096036A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 345/177
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/043 using propagating acoustic waves

Abstract

An acoustical sensor can include a fabricated surface that produces an acoustical sound signature responsive to a finger tapping on the fabricated surface, and a microphone within proximity of the fabricated surface to analyze and associate the acoustical sound signature with a user interface control for operating a mobile device or earpiece, for example, to adjust a volume, media selection, or user interface control. The microphone can include an ultra-low analog circuit to set a capacitance and establish a frequency response, the analog circuit programmable to identify a direction of a directional touch or localized touch on the fabricated surface. The analog circuit by way of a floating gate can control a real delay between a front and back diaphragm to control microphone directivity. Other embodiments are disclosed.

Claims

1. An acoustical sensor, comprising

a fabricated surface that produces an acoustical sound signature responsive to a finger movement thereon;

a microphone within proximity of the fabricated surface to capture the acoustical sound signature, where the microphone dually serves to capture acoustic voice signals, and

a processor associated communicatively coupled to the microphone that discriminates the acoustic voice signals and identifies the acoustical sound signature from

i) vibrations of an underlying structure coupled to the fabricated surface, and

ii) acoustical sound pressure waves of the acoustical sound signature generated in air, and

analyzes and associates the acoustical sound signature with a user interface control for operating a mobile device or earpiece attached thereto, where the microphone is adjacent to the fabricated surface or positioned within the fabricated surface.

2. The acoustical sensor of claim 1, where the processor identifies locations of the finger movements corresponding to user interface controls;

and

discriminates between finger touches, tapping, and sliding on the fabricated surface at the locations,

where the finger movement is a left, right, up, down, clockwise or counter-clockwise circular movement,

and the fabricated surface comprises an underlying structure that vibrates in response to the finger movement according to a structural modality.

3. The acoustical sensor of claim 1, where the processor determines a direction of the finger movement by analyzing amplitude and frequency characteristics of the acoustical sound signature and comparing them to time segmented features of recorded sounds from the fabricated surface, where the fabricated surface comprises structures of grooved inlets, elastic membranes, cilia fibers, or graded felt that vary in length and firmness.

4. The acoustical sensor of claim 3, where the processor

identifies changes in the acoustical sound signatures generated from the fabricated surface over time and frequency responsive to a sweeping of the finger across the fabricated surface,

where the fabricated surface is manufactured to exhibit surface treatment and physical structures that produce distinguishing characteristics of the acoustical sound signature responsive to directional touch.

5. The acoustical sensor of claim 1, where the fabricated surface comprises a non-linearly spaced saw tooth pattern to produce frequency dependent acoustic patterns based on the directional movement of directional touch on the fabricated surface.

6. The acoustical sensor of claim 1, where the fabricated surface is a function of surface roughness along two dimensions, and

the surface roughness changes from left to right with a first type of material variation, and

the surface roughness changes from bottom to top with a second type of material variation, so at least two dimensional rubbing directions can be determined.

7. The acoustical sensor of claim 1, where the microphone comprises an ultra-low analog circuit with at least one reverse diode junction to set a capacitance and establish a frequency response for identifying the direction of the finger movement.

8. The acoustical sensor of claim 1, where the microphone is asymmetrically positioned within the fabricated surface for distinguishing approximately straight-line finger-sweeps from a locus of points on the exterior of the fabricated surface inwards toward the microphone, or, oblong for distinguishing a direction of an approximately straight-line finger sweep from an exterior of the fabricated surface inwards to the microphone.

9. The acoustical sensor of claim 1, comprising a second microphone, where the fabricated surface approximates an elliptical pattern and the first microphone and second microphone are positioned at approximately the focal points of the elliptical pattern, where processor tracks finger movement across the fabricated surface by time of flight and phase variations of the acoustical sound signatures captured at the first and second microphone and distinguishes between absolute finger location based on time of flight and relative finger movement based on phase differences for associating with the user interface controls.

10. An acoustical sensor suitable for an earpiece, comprising

a fabricated surface to produce an acoustical sound signature responsive to a surface slide finger movement and localized finger tap;

a microphone within proximity of the fabricated surface to capture the acoustical sound signature; and

a processor to identify a movement and location of the localized touch responsive to detecting the acoustical sound signature for operating a user interface control of the earpiece,

where the fabricated surface is directional dependent by way of surface treatment that disposes grooved, jagged, graded, textured, or cilia structures or fibers.

11. The acoustical sensor of claim 10, where the microphone comprises a low power analog circuit to set a capacitance that establishes a characteristic frequency response and recognize an acoustical sound signature at a location on the fabricated surface, and the analog circuit comprises a programmable or adaptive floating gate that

changes analog transfer characteristics of the analog circuit to identify the direction of the directional touch, and

adjusts the frequency response by way of a controlled electron source to adjust the capacitance of the floating gate.

12. The acoustical sensor of claim 10, where the fabricated surface comprises a modal membrane or plate or combination thereof that excites modal acoustic patterns responsive to the localized touch, and the localized touch is a finger touch, tap or slide movement on a modal zone of the fabricated surface, where the material surface is a modal membrane that by way of the localized touch excites modal acoustic patterns detected by the microphone.

13. The acoustical sensor of claim 10, wherein the microphone includes a diaphragm with a front and a back port to delay a propagation of the acoustical sound signature from the front port to the back port of the diaphragm to create microphone directional sensitivity patterns for identifying the direction of the directional touch,

where the processor introduces a phase delay between the acoustical sound signature captured at the front port and the same acoustical sound signature captured at the back port to generate a directional sensitivity for increasing a signal to noise ratio of the acoustical sound signature.

14. The sensor switch of claim 10, comprising a second microphone positioned to detect changes in sound pressure level of the acoustical sound signature between the at least one more microphones, and from the changes identify a direction of the finger movement from the acoustical sound signatures.

15. The sensor of claim 10, where processor

digitally separates and suppresses acoustic waveforms caused by the finger movement on the fabricated surface from acoustic voice signals captured at the microphone according to detected vibrations patterns on the fabricated surface, and

operates in a low power processing mode to periodically poll the voice signals from the microphone to enter a wake mode responsive to identifying acoustic activity.

16. An earpiece, comprising:

a fabricated surface to produce an acoustical sound and vibration patterns responsive to a finger movement on the fabricated surface on the earpiece;

a microphone to capture the acoustical and vibration sound signatures due to the finger movement; and

a processor operatively coupled to the microphone to analyze and identify the high frequency acoustical and low frequency vibration sound signatures and perform a user interface action therefrom,

where the microphone is embedded in a housing of the earpiece to sense acoustic vibration responsive to finger movement on the fabricated surface of the earpiece,

where the fabricated surface is a grooved plastic, jagged plastic, a graded fabric, a textured fiber, elastic membranes, or cilia fibers.

17. The earpiece of claim 16, where the fabricated surface varies in stiffness, tension, thickness, or shape at predetermined locations to produce acoustical sound signatures characteristic to a location of a finger tap on the fabricated surface, and

the processor identifies a location of the finger tap to associate with the user interface action, a direction of the touching to associate with the user interface action, or a combination thereof.

18. The earpiece of claim 16, where the processor

monitors a sound pressure level at a first microphone and a second microphone responsive to a finger moving along the material surface;

tracks the finger movement along the material surface based on changes in the sound pressure level and frequency characteristics over time;

recognizes finger patterns from the tracking to associate with the user interface action; and

determines correlations among acoustical sound signatures as a finger touching the material surface moves from a first region of the fabricated surface to another region of the fabricated surface to determine which direction the finger is traveling,

where the processor detects form the correlations a finger motion on the fabricated surface that is a left, right, up, down, tap, clockwise or counter-clockwise circular movement.

19. The earpiece of claim 16, where the mechanical properties vary in thickness, stiffness, or shape and include a thin layer that produces higher frequencies and a thick layer that produces lower frequencies.

20. The earpiece of claim 16, where the processor:

learns acoustical sound signatures for custom fabricated surfaces;

generates models for the sound signatures as part of the learning; and

saves the models for retrieval upon the occurrence of new sound signatures,

where the models are Neural Network Models, Gaussian Mixture Models, or Hidden Markov Models.