Pattern Swapping Method and Multi-touch Device thereof

• US 20140320418A1
• Filed: 04/25/2013
• Published: 10/30/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 04/25/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: HTC Corporation
• Original Assignee: HTC Corporation
• Inventors: Tseng, Fu-Chang, Wu, Jing-Lung, Chueh, Hsin-Ti
• Granted Patent: US 9,104,309 B2
• 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

Abstract

Patterns displayed on a touch screen are swapped in response to occurrence or movements of touch points on the touch screen. Therefore, when a user of the multi-touch device including the touch screen intends to swap patterns displayed on the touch screen, he or she is merely required to give a few simultaneous touches corresponding to the patterns on the touch screen or to simply move the patterns on the touch screen using simultaneous touches.

Claims

1. An image swapping method for use in an electronic device supporting multi-touch inputs, comprising:

providing an image on a touch screen of the electronic device;

detecting contacts of at least two touch inputs on the touch screen;

determining positions of the touch points on the touch screen;

determining characteristics of image portions in the image corresponding to the touch inputs; and

swapping characteristics of the image portions.

2. The image swapping method of claim 1, wherein the providing of the image on the touch screen further comprises providing a user interface on the touch screen for receiving a user command to enable an image swapping function.

3. The image swapping method of claim 2, further comprising receiving user commands via the user interface to designate a type of characteristics and a swapping order of the characteristics.

4. The image swapping method of claim 1, wherein the determining of the characteristics of the image portions further comprising:

determining positions in the image corresponding to the touch points according to the positions of the touch points on the touch screen; and

determining pixels forming the image portions starting from the positions in the images.

5. The image swapping method of claim 1, wherein the characteristics is selected from one of the following:

color, object and shape.

6. The image swapping method of claim 1, wherein the swapping of the characteristics of the image portions further comprising:

scaling a size of one of the image portions according to the size of another image portion to be swapped with.

7. An electronic device, comprising:

a touch screen, configured to display at least an image and to receive at least two touch inputs from a user and transmit touch signals corresponding to the touch inputs, the touch signals comprising position information of the touch inputs;

a touch determination unit, configured to receive the touch signals and determine gesture pattern corresponding to the touch inputs according to the touch signals; and

an image processor, configured to determine image portions corresponding to the touch inputs, identify characteristics corresponding to the image portions and swap characteristics of the image portions according to the gesture pattern.

8. The electronic device of claim 7, wherein the touch determination unit comprises a gesture pattern table for use to determine the gesture pattern.

9. The electronic device of claim 7, wherein the touch determination unit is further configured to map positions of the touch inputs on the touch screen to positions of image portions in the image.

10. The electronic device of claim 7, wherein the image processor comprises an object identification unit configured to determine the image portions corresponding to the touch inputs according to a predetermined algorithm.

11. The electronic device of claim 10, wherein the image processor further comprises a swap pattern table comprising correspondence of the gesture pattern and respective swap manner of the image portions.

12. The electronic device of claim 7, wherein the touch screen is further configured to provide a user interface for receiving user command to designate a type of the characteristics.

13. The electronic device of claim 7, wherein the characteristics is one of the followings:

color, object, and shape.

14. An image swapping method for use in an electronic device comprising a touch screen displaying an image, comprising:

detecting at least two contacts on the touch screen;

determine corresponding positions of the contacts in the image and moving patterns of the contacts on the touch screen;

determining image characteristics of the corresponding positions in the image; and

swapping image characteristics of the corresponding positions in the image according to the moving patterns.

15. The image swapping method of claim 14, further comprising:

determining whether the moving patterns of the contacts meet predetermined criteria.

16. The image swapping method of claim 15, wherein in response to the moving patterns of the contacts meet the predetermined criteria, determining a swapping manner for swapping the image characteristics corresponding to the moving patterns.

17. The image swapping method of claim 14, further comprising:

determining image portions corresponding to the image characteristics in the image.

18. The image swapping method of claim 17, wherein swapping of the image characteristics further comprises swapping image portions corresponding to the image characteristics.

19. The image swapping method of claim 17, wherein swapping of the image portion corresponding to the image characteristics further comprises scaling a size of an image portion corresponding one of the image characteristics to another size of another image portion corresponding to another image characteristics to be swapped.

20. The image swapping method of claim 17, further comprising:

receiving a user command via the touch screen for designating a type of image characteristics, the type of image characteristics is one of the followings;

color, object and shape.