Patent Application
20110057896
This application claims the benefit under 35 U.S.C. §119(a) of a Korean Patent Application filed in the Korean Intellectual Property Office on Sep. 4, 2009 and assigned Serial No. 10-2009-0083625, the entire disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to an apparatus and method for controlling a mobile terminal, and more particularly, to an apparatus and method for controlling a mobile terminal by correcting an input error on a touch screen.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, a mobile terminal refers to a communication apparatus by which a user can perform communication and exchange data while on the move. Recently, in line with an era of digital convergence, various and useful functions have been realized on the mobile terminal. For example, using the mobile terminal, the user can now enjoy Audio-On-Demand (AOD) and Video-On-Demand (VOD) services, talk over the telephone through video communication while seeing a communication partner's face, or download and play a game. That is, mobile terminals are no longer being used solely for voice communication.
With the diversification of functions available in the mobile terminal, users come to find it necessary to control the mobile terminal more quickly and with greater ease of convenience. To this end, mobile terminal manufacturers have provided a display unit implementing a touch screen function to the users. There are several types of touch screen technology including capacitive overlay, resistive overlay, surface acoustic wave, a scheme using a transmitter, and a scheme using an infrared beam.
However, the mobile terminal having the touch screen has a drawback in that a frequent error can occur during recognition or operation of the touch screen. In particular, the capacitive overlay touch screen recognizes a touch of a user's body (for example, a finger) as an input thereof. In this scheme, there may occur an error caused by a difference between the timing at which the user's finger touches the touch screen and the timing at which the touch is recognized by the touch screen (an error in recognition of an input), an error involving a user's viewpoint with respect to the touch screen and the position of the touch screen, or an error resulting from a variation in inclination of the finger touching the touch screen. The main cause of the error in the capacitive overlay touch screen arise from discrepancy is that the user thinks the finger's touch point as a touch input point, whereas the touch screen recognizes a point indicated by two-dimensional (2D) coordinates (X, Y) as the user touch input point through internal coordinates detection algorithm and correction algorithm.
Considering the popularization of the mobile terminal using the touch screen, it is necessary to correct a recognition error of an input (or an input error). Thus, there is a need for providing an accurate touch input when using the touch screen.
An aspect of the present invention is to address at least the above problems and/or disadvantages and to provide at least the advantages described below. Accordingly, an aspect of the present invention is to provide an apparatus and method for allowing an accurate touch input using a touch screen.
According to an aspect of the present invention, a method for controlling a mobile terminal includes upon generation of a touch input on a touch screen, displaying a pointer at coordinates recognized by the touch screen with respect to the generated touch input and displaying a pointer-controller including the pointer, moving and displaying the pointer according to the movement of or within the pointer-controller, upon generation of an input of the pointer, recognizing that the touch input has been generated at a desired point or location, and performing an operation corresponding to the recognized touch input.
According to another aspect of the present invention, an apparatus for controlling a mobile terminal includes a touch screen for sensing generation of a touch input from a user and a controller for performing control operations including: upon generation of a touch input on a touch screen, displaying a pointer at coordinates recognized by the touch screen with respect to the generated touch input, and displaying a pointer-controller including the pointer, determining whether the pointer-controller is moved, and if so, moving and displaying the pointer according to the movement of the pointer-controller, and upon generation of an input of the pointer, recognizing that the touch input has been generated at a desired location or item and performing an operation corresponding to the recognized touch input.
The above and other features and advantages of an exemplary embodiment of the present invention will be more apparent to those skilled in the art from the following detailed description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which:
Hereinafter, an exemplary embodiment of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.
As shown, a key input unit 27 includes keys for inputting number and character information and function keys for setting various functions.
A radio frequency (RF) transceiver 23 performs a communication function of the mobile terminal and includes an RF unit and a modulator/demodulator (MODEM). The RF unit includes an RF transmitter for frequency up-converting and amplifying a transmission signal and an RF receiver for low-noise amplifying a received signal and frequency down-converting the received signal. The MODEM includes a transmitter for coding and modulating a transmission signal and a receiver for demodulating and decoding a signal received from the RF unit. Alternatively, the RF transceiver 23 may be replaced with an RF module such as a WiFi module or a Bluetooth module.
An audio processor 25 may include a COder/DECoder (CODEC) which includes a data codec and an audio codec. The data codec processes packet data, and the audio codec processes an audio signal such as voice or a multimedia file. The audio processor 25 converts a digital audio signal received from the MODEM into an analog audio signal through the audio codec and reproduces the analog audio signal. Alternatively, the audio processor 25 converts an analog audio signal generated from a microphone into a digital audio signal through the audio codec and transmits the digital audio signal to the MODEM. The codec may be provided separately or included in a controller 10.
A memory 30 includes a Read Only Memory (ROM) and a Random Access Memory (RAM). The memory 30 may include a program memory and data memories to store programs for controlling general operation of the mobile terminal and data for booting.
A display unit 50 displays an image signal and user data on the screen or displays data associated with communication. The display unit 50 may employ a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD), an Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED), or an Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode (AM OLED). When the LCD, the OLED, or the AM OLED is embodied in a touch screen display, the display unit 50 may operate as an input unit for controlling the mobile terminal, together with the key input unit 27. Thus, the display unit 50 according to an embodiment of the present invention operates as an input unit for controlling the mobile terminal together with the key input unit 27 via a touch screen.
The touch screen according to an embodiment of the present invention may be a capacitive overlay touch screen, on a surface of which a special conductive metallic material is coated to form a transparent electrode and a specific amount of current flows. Thus, when a user touches the capacitive overlay touch screen, the touch screen recognizes a part in which the amount of current is changed, by using the capacitance of the user's body, to detect a touch position. Although the touch screen according to an embodiment of the present invention is assumed to be a capacitive overlay touch screen, it should be noted that other variety of touchscreen technologies know to those skilled in the art may be applied such as resistive touch screen, surface acoustic wave, optical imaging, coded LCD, etc.
The controller 10 controls the overall operation of the mobile terminal. The controller 10 according to an embodiment of the present invention displays a pointer-controller 100 upon identifying (sensing) a touch input from the user to the touch screen of the display unit 50, determines that the touch input is generated at a position where a pointer 110 is located. Upon generation of an input after the pointer-controller 100 and the pointer 110 indicated by the user are moved, the controller 10 controls the mobile terminal to operate according to the touch input.
The controller 10 determines whether a touch input to the touch screen is generated in step S201, displays a pointer at coordinates recognized by the touch screen in step S202 if it is determined that the touch input to the touch screen is generated, and displays the pointer-controller including the pointer in step S203.
Since the user's desired touch input point and the input point recognized by the touch screen are not the same, the user can easily recognize such a difference based on the display of the pointer 110 at coordinates actually recognized by the touch screen.
In addition, the controller 10 according to an embodiment of the present invention displays the pointer 110 as a pointer 110b whose color (dark cross) is changed to the color of the pointer 110 as shown in
Thereafter, the controller 10 displays the pointer-controller 100 including the pointer 110 therein. Referring to
If the display unit 50 according to an embodiment of the present invention is assumed to have a resolution of 240×320 pixels, each of which has a dot pitch of 0.178 mm, the area where the touch input is sensed shown in
The pointer 110 displayed in step S202 and the pointer-controller 100 displayed in step S203 may be set to be displayed automatically upon execution of a particular operation mode of the mobile terminal which requires a precise touch input. For example, the pointer 110 and the pointer-controller 100 may be set such that, upon execution of a WAP browsing mode which requires a precise selection of a link item from among numerous link items, such as in the Internet, at least one of the pointer-controller 100 and the pointer 110 may be displayed.
Thereafter, the controller 10 determines whether the pointer-controller 100 is moved by the user in step S204, and controls the pointer 110 to be moved according to the movement of the pointer-controller 100 in step S205 if the pointer-controller 100 is moved.
According to an embodiment of the present invention, a user interface such as the pointer-controller 100 is provided to prevent an erroneous touch input to the touch screen. The pointer-controller 100 according to an embodiment of the present invention can be moved by the user, such that the user can move the pointer-controller 100 in a predetermined direction by touching and then dragging the pointer-controller 100 in the predetermined direction. For example, as shown in
Referring to
Referring to
The controller 10 according to an embodiment of the present invention, after moving and displaying the pointer 110 according to the movement of the pointer-controller 100 or according to the input of a control button, may indicate a position of the pointer 110 which is initially recognized by the touch screen as shown in
Next, if it is determined that an input indicating completion of the control of the pointer 110 is generated from the user in step S206, the controller 10 determines that a touch input to the touch screen is generated at a position where the pointer 110 is currently located in step S207, and controls components to perform an operation corresponding to the touch input in step S208.
The user moves the pointer 110 to the Mail item 31 to make a touch input for a desired location or item (for example, ‘Mail’) in steps S202 through S205. Afterwards, the user needs to indicate completion of the control of the pointer 110 to inform the controller 10 that the Mail item 31 is the desired touch input item.
In an embodiment of the present invention, the input indicating the completion of the control (for example, movement) of the pointer 110 is assumed to be a double-touch input of a predetermined part inward from the pointer-controller 110 (for example, a concentric circle 140 in the pointer-controller 110) as shown in
However, according to a modified embodiment of the present invention, the input indicating the completion of the control of the pointer 110 may be a long-touch input of the predetermined part of the pointer-controller 110 or an input of a predetermined key among keys of the key input unit 27. If it is determined that the input indicating completion of the control of the pointer 110 is generated from the user in step S206, the controller 10 according to an embodiment of the present invention may indicate the generation to the user by applying a visual effect (e.g., a change in color) to the pointer-controller 100.
If it is determined that the input indicating completion of the control of the pointer 110 is generated from the user in step S206, the controller 10 identifies that the Mail item 31 has been selected as shown in
Although the predetermined WAP page is accessed and the Mail item 31 is selected by way of example in an embodiment of the present invention, the user may more precisely and accurately use the mobile terminal (for example, select a menu for setting the mobile terminal) by using the pointer-controller 100 according to the embodiment of the present invention.
Note that the above-described methods according to the present invention can be realized in hardware or as software or computer code that can be stored in a machine readable recording medium such as a CD ROM, a RAM, thumbnail drive, a floppy disk, a flash storage, a hard disk, or a magneto-optical disk or downloaded over a network and stored as a non-transitory data on one of the aforementioned mediums, so that the methods described herein can be executed by such software using a general purpose computer, or a special processor or in programmable or dedicated hardware, such as an ASIC or FPGA. As would be understood in the art, the computer, the processor or the programmable hardware include memory components, e.g., RAM, ROM, Flash, etc. that may store or receive software or computer code that when accessed and executed by the computer, processor or hardware implement the processing methods described herein. In addition, it would be recognized that when a general purpose computer accesses code for implementing the processing shown herein, the execution of the code transforms the general purpose computer into a special purpose computer for executing the processing shown herein.
As is apparent from the foregoing description, when the user makes a touch input, the user can correct a difference between the user touch input point and an input point actually sensed by the touch screen, thereby allowing more accurate touch input.
While the invention has been shown and described with reference to a certain preferred embodiment thereof, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that various changes in form and details may be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims and equivalents thereof.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10-2009-0083625 | Sep 2009 | KR | national |
