Interactive input system

• US 8,692,768 B2
• Filed: 07/10/2009
• Issued: 04/08/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 07/10/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Smart Technologies ULC (Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Smart Technologies ULC (Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.)
• Inventors: Chtchetinine, Alex, Holmgren, David E., Kabada, Brinda, McGibney, Grant, McReynolds, Daniel, Zhang, Yun, Zhou, Ye
• Primary Examiner(s): Mengistu, Amare
• Assistant Examiner(s): Khoo, Stacy
• Application Number:
  US12/501,088
• Publication Number:
  US 20110006981A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,733 Days
• Field of Search: 345156-157, 345173-178, 178 1801- 1811
• US Class Current: 345/157
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2203/04104 Multi-touch detection in digitiser, i.e. details about the simultaneous detection of a plurality of touching locations, e.g. multiple fingers or pen and finger
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0325 using a plurality of light emitters or reflectors or a plurality of detectors forming a reference frame from which to derive the orientation of the object, e.g. by triangulation or on the basis of reference deformation in the picked up image
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0428 by sensing at the edges of the touch surface the interruption of optical paths, e.g. an illumination plane, parallel to the touch surface which may be virtual sensing beam interruptions in a planar beam grid of an optical touch-screen G06F3/0421

Abstract

A method for resolving ambiguities between at least two pointers in a plurality of input regions defining an input area of an interactive input system. The method includes capturing images of the plurality of input regions, the images captured by a plurality of imaging devices having a field of view of at least a portion of the input area, processing image data from the images to identify a plurality of targets for the at least two pointers within the input area, and analyzing the plurality of targets to resolve a real location associated with each pointer.

Claims

1. An interactive input system comprising:

an input surface having at least two input areas;

a plurality of imaging devices having at least partially overlapping fields of view encompassing at least one input regions within the input area; and

a processing structure configured to process image data acquired by the imaging devices to track the position of at least two pointers within the input regions by;

identifying consistent candidates in the processed image data to facilitate resolving ambiguities between the pointers, each of the consistent candidates comprising observations located in image frames captured by all of the plurality of imaging devices having a field of view encompassing a target'"'"'s input region;

determining the position of the consistent candidates by assigning a weight to the observations based on the clarity of the observations;

wherein the observations are clear when the imaging devices have a clear view of the observations and the consistent candidates are merged when the imaging devices have a merged view of a plurality of the observations, and

wherein a first weight is assigned to the clear observations, the first weight having predefined value, and a second weight is assigned to the merged observations, the second weight being less than the first weight.

2. The interactive input system of claim 1, wherein the processing structure further comprises an association procedure module to associate the consistent candidates with target associated with the at least two pointers.

3. The interactive input system of claim 2, wherein the processing structure further comprises a tracking procedure module for tracking the targets in the at least two input regions.

4. The interactive input system of claim 3, wherein the processing structure further comprises a state estimation module for determining locations of the at least two pointers based on information from the association procedure module and the tracking procedure module and image data from the plurality of imaging devices.

5. The interactive input system of claim 4, wherein the processing structure further comprises a disentanglement process module for, when the at least two pointers appears merged, determining locations for each of the pointers based on information from the state estimation module, the tracking procedure module and image data from the plurality of imaging devices.

6. The interactive input system of claim 1, wherein the processing structure uses weighted triangulation for processing the image data.

7. The interactive input system of claim 6, wherein weights are assigned to the image data from each of the plurality of imaging devices.

8. An interactive input system comprising:

an input surface defining an input area; and

at least three imaging devices having at least partially overlapping fields of view encompassing at least one input region within the input area;

a processing structure for processing images acquired by the imaging devices to determine the position of at least two pointers within the at least one input region by assigning a weight to observations in each image based on the clarity of the observation, the observations representative of the at least two pointers, and triangulate the positions of the at least two pointers based on each weighted observation;

wherein the observations are clear when the imaging devices have a clear view of the observations and the observations are merged when the imaging devices have a merged view of a plurality of the observations; and

wherein a first weight is assigned to the clear observations, the first weight having predefined value, and a second weight is assigned to the merged observations, the second weight being less than the first weight.

9. The interactive input system of claim 8, wherein the weighted triangulation resolves ambiguities in the observations.

10. In an interactive input system, a method of resolving ambiguities between at least two pointers in a plurality of input regions defining an input area comprising:

capturing images of a plurality of input regions, the images captured by a plurality of imaging devices having a field of view of a portion of the plurality of input regions;

processing image data from the images to identify a plurality of targets for the at least two pointers within the input area;

determining a state for each target of each image, the state indicating whether the target is clear or merged, wherein the target is clear when the imaging devices have a clear view of the target and the target is merged when the imaging devices have a merged view of a plurality of the targets;

assigning a weight to each target of each image based on the determined state, wherein a first weight is assigned to the image data for the clear target, the first weight having predefined value, and a second weight is assigned to the image data for the merged target, the second weight being less than the first weight; and

calculating a pointer location for each of the at least two pointers based on the weighted target data.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the calculating is performed using weighted triangulation.

12. The method of claim 10 further comprising determining real and phantom targets associated with each pointer.

13. The method of claim 10, wherein the second weight is selected from a range of values, wherein a top value of the range of values is less than the first weight.

14. A non-transitory computer readable medium embodying a computer program for resolving ambiguities between at least two pointers in a plurality of input regions defining an input area in an interactive input system, the computer program code operable to:

receive images of a plurality of input regions, the images captured by a plurality of imaging devices having a field of view of a portion of the plurality of input regions;

process image data from the images to identify a plurality of targets for the at least two pointers within the input area;

determine a state for each target of each image, the state indicating whether the target is clear or merged, wherein the target is clear when the imaging devices have a clear view of the target and the target is merged when the imaging devices have a merged view of a plurality of the targets;

assign a weight to each target of each image based on the determined state, wherein a first weight is assigned to the image data for the clear target, the first weight having predefined value, and a second weight is assigned to the image data for the merged target, the second weight being less than the first weight; and

calculate a pointer location for each of the at least two pointers based on the weighted target data.