Touch Sensitive Device Employing Bending Wave Vibration Sensors That Detect Touch Location And Provide Haptic Feedback

• US 20120229407A1
• Filed: 10/29/2010
• Published: 09/13/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 10/29/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: New Transducers Limited (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Harris, Neil John, Colloms, Martin
• Granted Patent: US 9,035,918 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 345/173
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/016 Input arrangements with force or tactile feedback as computer generated output to the user
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0433 in which the acoustic waves are either generated by a movable member and propagated within a surface layer or propagated within a surface layer and captured by a movable member

Abstract

A touch sensitive device comprising a touch sensitive display member capable of supporting bending wave vibration and having a user accessible display surface, an array of transducers coupled to the display member with the array of transducers comprising at least some transducers which are configured to both detect physical touching of the input surface by the user and to input impulses into the display member to produce a haptics sensation to the user in response to said detected touching of the display surface, and a signal processor to receive signals from at least some of transducers in the array of transducers and adapted to analyse the signals to determine the location of the physical touch on the display surface.

Claims

1. A touch sensitive device comprising

a touch sensitive display member capable of supporting bending wave vibration and having a user accessible display surface,

an array of transducers coupled to the display member with the array of transducers comprising at least some transducers which are configured to both detect physical touching of the input surface by the user and to input impulses into the display member to produce a haptics sensation to the user in response to said detected touching of the display surface, and

a signal processor to receive signals from at least some of transducers in the array of transducers and adapted to analyse the signals to determine the location of the physical touch on the display surface.

2. A touch sensitive device according to claim 1, wherein the signal processor comprises a neural network adapted to analyse the signals to provide high level user input.

3. A touch sensitive device according to claim 1, wherein the array of transducers are configured to input impulses which localise the haptics sensation to the detected touch location.

4. A touch sensitive device according to claim 1, wherein at least some of the array of transducers are adapted to detect any of the group consisting of input surface deflection, input surface velocity, applied pressure, applied force, applied angle of touch, and the duration of any touch.

5. A touch sensitive device according to claim 1 wherein the signal processor is configured to process the received signals to measure a transfer function of the input signal at each of the plurality of transducers, to infer an inverse transfer function from each measured transfer function and to generate output signals using the appropriate inverse transfer function to determine the touch location.

6. A touch sensitive device according to claim 1, wherein the display member comprises an electronic display screen.

7. A method of operating a touch sensitive device comprising a touch sensitive display member capable of supporting bending wave vibration and having a user accessible display surface, an array of transducers coupled to the display member and a signal processor, the method comprising:

configuring the array of transducers to comprise at least some transducers which are configured to both detect physical touching of the input surface by the user and to input impulses into the display member to produce a haptics sensation to the user in response to said detected touching of the display surface, and

arranging the signal processor to receive signals from at least some of transducers in the array of transducers and adapting the signal processor to analyse the signals to determine the location of the physical touch on the display surface.

8. A method according to claim 7, comprising configuring the signal processor to have a neural network and analysing the signals by means of the neural network to provide high level user input.

9. A method according to claim 7, comprising configuring the array of transducers to input impulses which localise the haptics sensation to the detected touch location.

10. A method according to claim 7 comprising adapting at least some of the array of transducers to detect any of the group consisting of input surface deflection, input surface velocity, applied pressure, applied force, applied angle of touch, and the duration of any touch.

11. A method according to claim 7, comprising configuring the signal processor to process the received signals to measure a transfer function of the input signal at each of the plurality of transducers, to infer an inverse transfer function from each measured transfer function and to generate output signals using the appropriate inverse transfer function to determine the touch location.

12. A method according to claim 7, comprising arranging the display member to comprise an electronic display screen.

13. A method according to claim 7, comprising processing signals detected by the array of transducers to detect positional information based on dispersion correction.

14. A method according to claim 7, comprising processing signals detected by the array of transducers to detect positional information based on wavelet transform.

15. A method according to claim 7, comprising processing signals detected by the array of transducers to detect positional information using a combination of dispersion correction and wavelet transform.

16. A method according to claim 15, wherein the increased efficiency of the combined data analysis allows for the substantial truncation of data collection.

17. A method according to claim 15, wherein the increased efficiency of the combined data analysis allows the processor size to be reduced and/or the processor computation rate to be increased.

18. A method according to claim 15, comprising processing the detected signals to preserve XYZ information.

19. A method according to claim 18, comprising extracting data to identify gestures such as sweep and pinch made on the touch plane.

20. A method according to claim 18, comprising processing data to discard higher order terms in the computation of the combination of wavelet and dispersion corrected sensed components.

21. A method according to claim 19, comprising feeding resulting twelve-value signature into a neural network to allow instantaneous positional and force information to be estimated.

22. A method according to claim 21, comprising feeding historical information into the neural network to permit estimation of the rates of change.

23. A method according to claim 21, comprising processing resulting signatures together with self-calibration to train the touch sensitive device to recognise higher level constructs such as touch/tap separation and gestures.