System and Method for Reducing Occurrences of Unintended Operations in an Electronic Device

• US 20130176264A1
• Filed: 01/09/2012
• Published: 07/11/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 01/09/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google Technology Holdings LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Motorola Mobility, Inc. (Lenovo Group Ltd.)
• Inventors: Alameh, Rachid M., Dickinson, Timothy, Dietrich, Aaron L., Zurek, Robert A.
• Granted Patent: US 8,890,823 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 345/174
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/1694 the I/O peripheral being a single or a set of motion sensors for pointer control or gesture input obtained by sensing movements of the portable computer
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2200/1637 Sensing arrangement for detection of housing movement or orientation, e.g. for controlling scrolling or cursor movement on the display of an handheld computer
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2203/04106 Multi-sensing digitiser, i.e. digitiser using at least two different sensing technologies simultaneously or alternatively, e.g. for detecting pen and finger, for saving power or for improving position detection
• 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 3/03547 Touch pads, in which fingers can move on a surface
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/038 Control and interface arrangements therefor, e.g. drivers or device-embedded control circuitry
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0414 using force sensing means to determine a position
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0418 for error correction or compensation, e.g. based on parallax, calibration or alignment

Abstract

A method of operating an electronic device, and an electronic device, are disclosed in which occurrences of unintended operations of the electronic device, such as can occur in response to inadvertent actuations of actuators of the electronic device, are reduced. In one example embodiment, the method 500 includes detecting 510 an actuation of a first sensor that is associated with a first touch-sensitive component of the electronic device, and acquiring 512 data from an additional sensor of the electronic device. The method also includes determining 518, based at least in part upon the data, whether the actuation is valid, and either performing 524 or refraining 522 from performing at least one operation based at least in part upon the determining. In at least one additional embodiment, the first sensor is a piezoelectric sensor and the additional sensor is an accelerometer.

Claims

1. A method of operating an electronic device, the method comprising:

detecting an actuation of a first sensor that is associated with a first touch-sensitive component of the electronic device;

acquiring data from an additional sensor of the electronic device;

determining, based at least in part upon the data, whether the actuation is valid; and

either performing or refraining from performing at least one operation based at least in part upon the determining.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the first sensor includes a piezoelectric sensor.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the additional sensor includes one or more of:

an accelerometer, a gyro, an electronic compass, and a velocity sensor.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the additional sensor includes a second touch-sensitive component, and the first touch-sensitive component and the second touch-sensitive component are configured to be actuated by touching events occurring at a shared actuation surface.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

obtaining contextual information, wherein the determining is further based at least in part upon the contextual information.

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising:

deriving a threshold based at least in part upon the contextual information, and wherein the determining includes comparing the threshold with a value based at least in part upon the data.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

obtaining additional information including one or both of;

operational mode status information and user data, the user data concerning one or more of a user preference, a user setting, or a user specification, and wherein the determining is based at least in part upon the additional information.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising:

deriving a threshold based at least in part upon the additional information, and wherein the determining includes comparing the threshold with a value based at least in part upon the data.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

obtaining, and storing in a memory component of the electronic device, additional information representative of one or more user-defined touch exceptions.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the acquiring occurs at least partly during a period of time prior to the detecting.

11. The method of claim 1 wherein, upon the actuation being determined to be valid, the performing or refraining from performing includes one or more of passing along a touch event status, initiating or discontinuing a telephone call, initiating sending of a text message based at least in part upon the determining, or turning on or off a light associated with the electronic device.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein, upon the actuation being determined to not be valid, the performing or refraining from performing includes the refraining from performing of the at least one operation.

13. An electronic device comprising:

a touch screen assembly including a piezoelectric sensor at least indirectly connected to a touchable lens surface;

a different sensor; and

at least one processing device connected at least indirectly to the piezoelectric sensor and to the different sensor,

wherein the at least one processing device is configured to determine whether an actuation of the piezoelectric sensor is invalid based at least in part upon information received by the processing device from the different sensor, and

wherein the at least one processing device is configured to cause the electronic device to refrain from performing, or to perform, at least one operation upon making a determination that the actuation is invalid.

14. The electronic device of claim 13,

wherein the touch screen assembly is mounted in relation to a housing and further includes one or more printed circuit board (PCB) components and a light emitting diode (LED) display component positioned between the piezoelectric sensor and the touchable lens surface.

15. The electronic device of claim 13,

wherein the different sensor includes a motion sensor that includes one or more of:

an accelerometer, a gyro, an electronic compass, and a velocity sensor; and

wherein the processing device is configured to determine whether the actuation is invalid based at least in part upon whether a component of a motion normal to a plane of the touchable lens surface exceeds a predetermined threshold.

16. The electronic device of claim 13, further comprising:

an additional sensing device, wherein the processing device is configured to determine whether the actuation of the piezoelectric sensor is invalid based at least in part upon additional information received by the processing device from the additional sensing device.

17. The electronic device of claim 16, wherein the additional sensing device includes one or more of an infrared sensor, a camera, or a second touch-sensitive device.

18. The electronic device of claim 17 wherein the second touch-sensitive device comprises one or more of:

a capacitive, resistive, acoustic, ultrasonic proximity, or optical touch sensor.

19. The electronic device of claim 16, further comprising:

a memory portion in which are stored a plurality of information portions concerning a plurality of touch event exceptions, and wherein the processing device is configured to determine that the actuation of the piezoelectric sensor is invalid if contextual information sensed by the additional sensing device matches to a first of the information portions concerning a first of the touch event exceptions.

20. The electronic device of claim 13, wherein the electronic device includes one or more contextual sensors to determine contextual information, wherein the contextual sensors include one or more of a touch sensor, an acoustic sensor, a global positioning system (GPS) sensor, an accelerometer, an imager, a proximity sensor, a capacitive sensor, an environmental sensor, and a light sensor, and wherein the contextual information relates to one or more of a device location, a device speed, a manner of device handling, a device position, a device carry mode, and an environmental condition

21. The electronic device of claim 13, wherein the touch screen assembly includes a lens component and an arm component linking the lens component at least indirectly to the piezoelectric sensor, such that first movement of the lens component results in second movement of the piezoelectric sensor.