ONE-DIMENSIONAL INPUT SYSTEM AND METHOD

• US 20150261310A1
• Filed: 07/30/2013
• Published: 09/17/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 08/01/2012
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Whirlscape Inc.
• Original Assignee: Whirlscape Inc.
• Inventors: Truong, Khai Nhut, Walmsley, William Spencer, Snelgrove, William Xavier, Smith, Severin Ovila Ambroise
• Application Number:
  US14/418,426
• Publication Number:
  US 20150261310A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/1626 with a single-body enclosure integrating a flat display, e.g. Personal Digital Assistants [PDAs]
• 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 2200/1612 Flat panel monitor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2200/1614 Image rotation following screen orientation, e.g. switching from landscape to portrait mode
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2200/1636 Sensing arrangement for detection of a tap gesture on the housing
• 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 2203/04101 2.5D-digitiser, i.e. digitiser detecting the X/Y position of the input means, finger or stylus, also when it does not touch, but is proximate to the digitiser's interaction surface and also measures the distance of the input means within a short range in the Z direction, possibly with a separate measurement setup
• 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 2203/04808 Several contacts: gestures triggering a specific function, e.g. scrolling, zooming, right-click, when the user establishes several contacts with the surface simultaneously; e.g. using several fingers or a combination of fingers and pen
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0233 Character input methods
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0237 using prediction or retrieval techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0412 Digitisers structurally integrated in a display
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0482 Interaction with lists of selectable items, e.g. menus
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04883 for inputting data by handwriting, e.g. gesture or text
• 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

A one-dimensional input system is provided. The input system comprises a plurality of characters arranged on a single dimension. User input along the dimension is continuously disambiguated. The characters may be arranged based on factors including motor efficiency, optimization of disambiguation and learnability. A touchscreen interface of the one-dimensional input system is provided. A gesture-based interface of the one-dimensional input system is also provided.

Claims

1. A system for enabling a user to provide input to a computer, the system comprising:

(a) an input unit operable to obtain one or more user input from said user and map each said user input to a coordinate along a one-dimensional input space; and

(b) a disambiguation unit operable to apply continuous disambiguation along said one-dimensional input space to generate an output corresponding to the user input.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein said input space is selected from a fully continuous dimension and a continuous dimension comprising a separated plurality of continuous segments.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein said one-dimensional input space comprises a non-linear dimension parameterized along a one-dimensional manifold.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the disambiguation unit applies information about said coordinates along a second dimension.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein said one-dimensional input space comprises a finite number of characters and said continuous disambiguation comprises disambiguation based upon specific points of said coordinates corresponding to said user input.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein said disambiguation unit is provided with access to one or more corpora of text which are referenced during disambiguation.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the disambiguation unit applies a maximum a posteriori (MAP) disambiguation process.

8. The system of claim 6, wherein said disambiguation process comprises conditioning the output based on one or more contextual features.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein said contextual features comprise any one or more of the following:

words surrounding an entered word corresponding to the user input, words previously entered by the user, application context, time of day, date, geographical location, weather, user mood, and brightness.

10. The system of claim 5, wherein said characters are arranged along said one-dimensional input space by optimizing an objective function comprising one or more of assigning a weight to each of motor efficiency, predictive disambiguation and post hoc disambiguation.

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19. A method for enabling a user to provide input to a computer, the method comprising:

(a) obtaining one or more user input from said user;

(b) mapping each said user input to a coordinate along a one-dimensional input space; and

(c) generating an output corresponding to the user input by applying, using one or more processors, continuous disambiguation along said one-dimensional input space.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein said input space is selected from a fully continuous dimension and a continuous dimension comprising a separated plurality of continuous segments.

21. The method of claim 19, wherein said one-dimensional input space comprises a non-linear dimension parameterized along a one-dimensional manifold.

22. The method of claim 19, further comprising applying information about said coordinates along a second dimension.

23. The method of claim 19, wherein said one-dimensional input space comprises a finite number of characters and said continuous disambiguation comprises disambiguation based upon specific points of said coordinates corresponding to said user input.

24. The method of claim 19, further comprising referencing one or more corpora of text during disambiguation.

25. The method of claim 24, wherein said disambiguation comprises applying a maximum a posteriori (MAP) disambiguation process.

26. The method of claim 24, wherein said disambiguation process comprises conditioning the output based on one or more contextual features.

27. The method of claim 26, wherein said contextual features comprise any one or more of the following:

words surrounding an entered word corresponding to the user input, words previously entered by the user, application context, time of day, date, geographical location, weather, user mood, and brightness.

28. The method of claim 23, further comprising arranging said characters along said one-dimensional input space by optimizing an objective function comprising one or more of assigning a weight to each of motor efficiency, predictive disambiguation and post hoc disambiguation.

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