Intelligent Touchscreen Keyboard With Finger Differentiation

• US 20130176227A1
• Filed: 01/08/2013
• Published: 07/11/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 01/09/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Zhai, Shumin
• Granted Patent: US 9,448,651 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 345/168
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/02 Input arrangements using manually operated switches, e.g. using keyboards or dials
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/041 Digitisers, e.g. for touch screens or touch pads, characterised by the transducing means
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0412 Digitisers structurally integrated in a display
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04186 Touch location disambiguation
• 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

Implementations of the present disclosure include actions of displaying a plurality of keys on a touchscreen of a computing device, receiving user input to the touchscreen, the user input including a contact with the touchscreen, in response to receiving the user input, determining spatial information associated with the contact and generating an image of the contact, determining an output based on the image and the spatial information, and executing the output.

Claims

1. A computing device, comprising:

a touchscreen;

one or more processors in communication with the touchscreen; and

a computer-readable medium that is coupled to the one or more processors and that has instructions stored thereon which, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform operations comprising;

displaying a plurality of keys on the touchscreen;

receiving user input to the touchscreen, the user input comprising a contact with the touchscreen;

in response to receiving the user input, determining spatial information associated with the contact and generating an image of the contact;

determining an output based on the image and the spatial information; and

executing the output.

2. The computing device of claim 1, wherein the touchscreen is configurable to display a touchscreen keyboard, the touchscreen keyboard including a plurality of keys.

3. The computing device of claim 1, wherein the spatial information comprises a position of the image.

4. The computing device of claim 3, wherein operations further comprise generating a plurality of probability distributions and determining the output based on the probability distributions.

5. The computing device of claim 4, wherein each probability distribution is associated with one or both of a key of the plurality of keys and a finger of the user.

6. The computing device of claim 4, wherein each probability distribution is based on one or both of features of the image and the position of the image.

7. The computing device of claim 4, wherein determining an output comprises selecting a key of the plurality of keys based on the probability distributions, the output corresponding to the key.

8. The computing device of claim 1, wherein the image is generated using one or more technologies including surface acoustic wave sensing, capacitive sensing, infrared sensing, and optical sensing.

9. The computing device of claim 1, wherein operations further comprise generating one or more finger models, each of the one or more finger models being based on at least one image.

10. The computing device of claim 8, wherein the one or more finger models correspond to a particular user.

11. The computing device of claim 1, wherein operations further comprise classifying the image using one or more classification schemes, the classifications schemes including image-based classification and feature-based classification.

12. The computing device of claim 11, wherein operations further comprise classifying the image based on determining the position of the contact.

13. The computing device of claim 12, wherein operations further comprise classifying the image by comparing the image to the one or more finger models.

14. The computing device of claim 13, wherein operations further comprise updating one of the plurality of finger models based on the image.

15. The computing device of claim 1, wherein operations further comprise storing the image.

16. The computing device of claim 1, wherein operations further comprise determining that the contact is a tap.

17. The computing device of claim 1, wherein operations further comprise executing the output by one or more of performing a function and displaying a character on the touchscreen.

18. A computer-implemented method executed using one or more processors, the method comprising:

displaying a plurality of keys on a touchscreen;

receiving user input to the touchscreen, the user input comprising a contact with the touchscreen;

in response to receiving the user input, determining spatial information associated with the contact and generating an image of the contact;

determining an output based on the image and the spatial information; and

executing the output.

19. A computer-readable medium storing instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform operations comprising:

displaying a plurality of keys on a touchscreen;

receiving user input to the touchscreen, the user input comprising a contact with the touchscreen;

in response to receiving the user input, determining spatial information associated with the contact and generating an image of the contact;

determining an output based on the image and the spatial information; and

executing the output.