Reduced instruction set television control system and method of use

• US 8,130,134 B2
• Filed: 01/06/2009
• Issued: 03/06/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 01/06/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hong Kong Applied Science And Technology Research Institute Co., Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Hong Kong Applied Science And Technology Research Institute Co., Ltd.
• Inventors: Meng, Bojun, Liou, Yeaun Jau
• Primary Examiner(s): PATEL, DHARTI HARIDAS
• Application Number:
  US12/349,263
• Publication Number:
  US 20100171887A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,155 Days
• Field of Search: 341/176
• US Class Current: 341/176
• 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 3/038 Control and interface arrangements therefor, e.g. drivers or device-embedded control circuitry

Abstract

The claimed invention relates to an interactive television system including a controller for converting the hand motion of the user into acceleration data of three axes by a single 3-axis accelerometer 113 and an interactive system for mapping the output of the acceleration data with the pre-defined data in a motion database thereof so that the user can remotely control the TV centric devices with a reduced set of instructions. The claimed invention also relates to a method of using a controller incorporated with a single 3-axis accelerometer to control an interactive system for TV centric devices.

Claims

1. An interactive television system controller comprising an ergodynamic housing incorporated with a top panel, a main PCB board having a micro control unit, a 3-axis accelerometer, a wireless transmitter, and a wireless communication module,

wherein said controller switches to data channel mode by the micro control unit sensing a user pressing continuously a first button on the controller activating the 3-axis accelerometer and the wireless communication module,

wherein the 3-axis accelerometer senses the user'"'"'s hand motion to generate acceleration data,

wherein the micro control unit captures the acceleration data from the 3-axis accelerometer,

wherein the micro control unit senses the user'"'"'s button selection on a second group of one or more buttons on the controller to generate button status data of the second group of one or more buttons,

wherein the micro control unit packetizes said acceleration data with the button status data to create packetized data,

wherein the wireless communication module transmits the packetized data to an interactive system,

wherein the interactive system receives the packetized data,

wherein the interactive system quantizes said acceleration data according to pre-defined configurable quantization ranges stored in the interactive system,

wherein the interactive system displaces a cursor on a screen of the interactive system to create a new cursor position based upon magnitude of the quantized acceleration data, and

wherein said controller switches to commands channel mode by the micro control unit sensing the user releasing the first button.

2. The interactive television system controller according to claim 1, wherein said main PCB board additionally comprises, a power converter, capacitors and resistances.

3. The interactive television system controller according to claim 1, wherein said 3 axis accelerometer additionally comprises a 3-axis acceleration data derivation chipset.

4. The interactive television system controller according to claim 1, wherein said wireless communication module is in the mode selected from a group consisting of Bluetooth, IrDA, Zigbee and Amplitude Shift Keying (ASK) based RF chipset.

5. A method of using an interactive television system controller comprising:

switching said controller to data channel mode by a micro control unit in the controller sensing a user pressing continuously a first button on the controller activating an accelerometer and a wireless module of the controller,

sensing the user'"'"'s hand motion by the accelerometer in said controller generating acceleration data,

capturing the acceleration data from the accelerometer by the micro control unit,

sensing the user'"'"'s button selection on a second group of one or more buttons by the micro control unit generating button status data of the second group of one or more buttons,

packetizing said acceleration data with the button status data by the micro control unit creating packetized data,

transmitting the packetized data to an interactive system through the wireless module,

receiving the packetized data by the interactive system,

quantizing said acceleration data according to pre-defined configurable quantization ranges stored in said interactive system,

displacing a cursor on a screen of said interactive system to create a new cursor position based upon magnitude of said quantized acceleration data, and

switching said controller to commands channel mode by the micro control unit sensing the user releasing the first button.

6. The method of using an interactive television system controller according to claim 5, wherein said sensing additionally comprises sensing the user'"'"'s hand motion in three axes including x-axis, y-axis and z-axis simultaneously.

7. The method of using an interactive television system controller according to claim 5, wherein said packetizing and said transmitting are in a frequency between 1-200 Hz.

8. The method of using an interactive television system controller according to claim 5, wherein said acceleration data is 2 bytes.

9. The method of using an interactive television system controller according to claim 5, wherein said data of button status is 1 byte.