Hand gesture interaction with touch surface

• US 20050052427A1
• Filed: 09/10/2003
• Published: 03/10/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 09/10/2003
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc. (Mitsubishi Electric Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc. (Mitsubishi Electric Corporation)
• Inventors: Forlines, Clifton Lloyd, Wu, Michael Chi Hung, Ryall, Kathleen, Shen, Chia
• Application Number:
  US10/659,180
• Publication Number:
  US 20050052427A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 345/173
• 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 3/04883 for inputting data by handwriting, e.g. gesture or text
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/166 Editing, e.g. inserting or deleting

Abstract

The invention provides a system and method for recognizing different hand gestures made by touching a touch sensitive surface. The gestures can be made by one finger, two fingers, more than two fingers, one hand and two hands. Multiple users can simultaneously make different gestures. The gestures are used to control computer operations. The system measures an intensity of a signal at each of an mxn array of touch sensitive pads in the touch sensitive surface. From these signal intensities, a number of regions of contiguous pads touched simultaneously by a user is determined. An area of each region is also determined. A particular gesture is selected according to the number of regions and the area of each region.

Claims