Disambiguating intentional and incidental contact and motion in multi-touch pointing devices

• US 8,786,561 B2
• Filed: 05/18/2011
• Issued: 07/22/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 05/18/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Stoumbos, Christopher, Miller, John, Young, Robert, Benko, Hrvoje, Perek, David, Ansell, Peter, Haehre, Oyvind
• Primary Examiner(s): GIESY, ADAM
• Application Number:
  US13/110,013
• Publication Number:
  US 20120293420A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,161 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 345/173
• 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 3/03543 Mice or pucks G06F3/03541 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/038 Control and interface arrangements therefor, e.g. drivers or device-embedded control circuitry
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04186 Touch location disambiguation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0488 using a touch-screen or digitiser, e.g. input of commands through traced gestures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04883 for inputting data by handwriting, e.g. gesture or text

Abstract

An input device has both a touch sensor and a position sensor. A computer using data from the input device uses the relative motion of a contact on a touch sensor with respect to motion from a position detector to disambiguate intentional from incidental motion. The input device provides synchronized position sensor and touch sensor data to the computer to permit processing the relative motion and performing other computations on both position sensor and touch sensor data. The input device can encode the magnitude and direction of motion of the position sensor and combines it with the touch sensor data from the same time frame, and output the synchronized data to the computer.

Claims

1. A process comprising:

receiving touch sensor data from a touch sensor on a device and position data from a position sensor indicating movement of the device into memory;

comparing, with a processing device, motion of a contact on the touch sensor with direction of motion of the device indicated by the position sensor, to provide a comparison result; and

providing information about the contact on the touch sensor based on the comparison result.

2. The process of claim 1, wherein if motion of a contact is the same direction as motion of the device indicated by the position sensor, then motion of the contact is indicated as intentional.

3. The process of claim 2, wherein if motion of a contact is an opposite direction as motion of the device indicated by the position sensor, then motion of the contact is indicated as incidental.

4. The process of claim 1, wherein if motion of a contact is an opposite direction as motion of the device indicated by position sensor, then motion of the contact is indicated as incidental.

5. The process of claim 1, wherein the received touch sensor data and position data are from the same time frame.

6. The process of claim 1, wherein the received position sensor data comprises data describing a direction and magnitude of motion of the device.

7. A multi-touch pointing device, comprising:

a touch sensor on the pointing device having an output indicating contact with the touch sensor;

a position sensor having an output indicating direction of movement of the pointing device; and

a processing device having inputs connected to receive the outputs of the touch sensor and the position sensor, and synchronizing information about the output of the position sensor and the output of the touch sensor from the same time frame, to provide an output of the multi-touch pointing device.

8. The multi-touch pointing device of claim 7, wherein the processing device comprises:

a motion calculator having a first input for receiving the position sensor data for a first sample time and a second input for receiving the position sensor data for a second sample time and an output providing an encoding of a direction of motion of pointing device indicated by the position sensor, and

a synchronization module having a first input for receiving the output of the touch sensor and a second input for receiving the output of the motion calculator from the same time frame and an output providing the synchronized inputs as the output of the multi-touch pointing device.

9. The multi-touch pointing device of claim 8, wherein the information about the output of the position sensor comprises motion of the pointing device.

10. The multi-touch pointing device of claim 8 wherein the output of the motion calculator encodes direction and magnitude of motion of the pointing device.

11. The multi-touch pointing device of claim 7, wherein the information about the output of the position sensor comprises motion of the pointing device.

12. The multi-touch pointing device of claim 7, wherein the synchronized information comprises a direction of motion of the pointing device and data output from the touch sensor.

13. A computing machine comprising:

a memory for storing information describing motion of a contact on a touch sensor on an input device and information describing motion of the input device indicated by a position sensor on the input device;

a processing device including a comparator having a first input for receiving information describing the motion of the contact on the touch sensor and a second input for receiving information describing direction of the motion of the input device from the position sensor, and an output providing a comparison result.

14. The computing machine of claim 13, wherein if motion of a contact is the same direction as motion of the input device indicated by the position sensor, then motion of the contact is indicated as intentional.

15. The computing machine of claim 14, wherein if motion of a contact is an opposite direction as motion of the input device indicated by the position sensor, then motion of the contact is indicated as incidental.

16. The computing machine of claim 15, wherein the information describing motion of a contact on the touch sensor data and the information describing motion of the input device are from the same time frame.

17. The computing machine of claim 13, wherein if motion of a contact is an opposite direction as motion of the input device indicated by the position sensor, then motion of the contact is indicated as incidental.

18. The computing machine of claim 13, wherein the information describing motion of a contact on the touch sensor data and the information describing motion of the input device are from the same time frame.

19. The computing machine of claim 18, wherein the information describing motion of the input device comprises data describing a direction and magnitude of motion.

20. The computing machine of claim 13, wherein the information describing motion of the input device comprises data describing a direction and magnitude of motion.