The present application claims priority to Japanese Patent Application No. 2022-202863, filed Dec. 20, 2022, the entirety of which is herein incorporated by reference.
The present disclosure relates to an input display device having a human-machine interface function, and more particularly, to an input display device including a three-dimensional operation unit.
An input display device is disclosed in which a protrusion is provided on a touch panel disposed to be superimposed on a display, and an image such as an operation icon is displayed at a position overlapping the protrusion (for example, JP 2020-190832 A). The user performs an input by performing a touch operation on the protrusion.
In a display device that performs an operation with a capacitive touch panel, a user interface (hereinafter, referred to as a three-dimensional UI) has been proposed in which a cover glass has an uneven shape to allow a touch position to be tactilely recognized and the touch position can be understood without looking.
Among three-dimensional UIs, there is a cylindrical knob (button). In the operation on the knob, the rotation operation is performed by sliding a side face of the knob with a finger pad, and the knob does not actually rotate. For example, as illustrated in
As in the knob of the mechanical switch, the user holds the cylindrical knob 30 with the fingers U, and slides the finger pad on the side face of the knob 30 to rotate the fingers U, as illustrated in
The touch panel senses circumferential movement of the fingers U touching the knob 30 and determines a rotation operation on the knob.
When the knob is operated, the number of fingers sensed by the operation method of the user is assumed to vary.
Assuming operation with one hand, the number of fingers operating the knob is 1 to 5.
The distance of the finger operating the knob from the sensor of the touch panel varies depending on the finger. For example, as illustrated in
The distance between adjacent fingers is not uniform.
When the distance between the two fingers is too short, sensing is performed as one finger, or when the removed finger approaches during the rotation operation, sensing of the finger disappears.
In such a situation, when sensing of the referred finger repeatedly disappears before the rotation amount (for example, 45 degrees) for determining the presence or absence of the rotation operation is reached, a situation may occur in which the determination of rotation is not smoothly made, no matter how much the user turns the knob. For example, when four fingers U1 to U4 are sensed on the knob 30, as illustrated in
The present disclosure solves such a conventional problem. An object of the present disclosure is to provide an input display device capable of improving determination accuracy of a rotation operation on a three-dimensional operation unit.
An input display device according to the present disclosure includes a display configured to display an image, a capacitive touch panel attached to the display, at least one three-dimensional operation unit on a front face of the touch panel, and a sensing unit configured to measure an electrostatic capacitance of the touch panel and sense an operation on the touch panel based on the measured electrostatic capacitance, wherein the sensing unit senses rotation amounts of all fingers touching the operation unit, and determines that a rotation operation on the operation unit is performed when a sensed rotation amount of any of the fingers reaches a threshold value.
In one aspect, in a case where sensing of a finger disappears before a rotation amount of the finger having a largest rotation amount reaches the threshold value, the sensing unit updates rotation amounts of remaining fingers to a rotation amount of the finger having the largest rotation amount. In an aspect, in a case where sensing of a finger touching the operation unit is added in a middle of the rotation, the sensing unit allocates a rotation amount of a finger having a largest rotation amount to a rotation amount of an added finger. In an aspect, the sensing unit resets a sensed rotation amount of a finger when determining that a rotation operation on the operation unit is performed. In an aspect, the input display device further includes a display unit configured to display a gauge, corresponding to a rotation operation, around the operation unit of the display. In an aspect, the display unit displays an icon representing an input operation at a corresponding position of the operation unit of the display. In an aspect, the operation unit has a cylindrical knob shape, a cylindrical button shape, or a cylindrical finger grip shape.
According to the present disclosure, the rotation operation on the operation unit is determined based on the sensing result of the rotation amounts of all the fingers touching the operation unit, so that the rotation operation of the operation unit can be stably determined, even if the number of sensed fingers increases or decreases.
Embodiments of the present disclosure will now be described. An input display device of the present disclosure provides an interface between a person and a machine. The input display device of the present disclosure is not particularly limited, but is applied to, for example, an electronic device equipped with a display with a touch panel on which a three-dimensional UI unit is formed. The electronic device equipped with the display with a touch panel is, for example, an in-vehicle device having a navigation function, an audio visual function, a television function, and/or the like.
Next, embodiments of the present disclosure will be described in detail with reference to the drawings.
The display 110 is not particularly limited, but includes, for example, a liquid crystal panel or an organic EL panel, and displays image data provided from the controller 140. For example, an icon representing an input operation of the three-dimensional UI unit 130 is displayed at the lower part of the three-dimensional UI unit 130.
The touch panel 120 includes, for example, a plurality of sensors (sensing units) formed at positions where a plurality of X-side and Y-side electrode lines intersect, and the sensors sense a change in electrostatic capacitance when a user's finger, hand, or the like approaches or comes into contact with the touch panel 120. The touch panel 120 is mounted on the display 110 and provides an input interface for the user to make an input to an icon or the like displayed on the display 110.
The touch panel 120 further includes one or more three-dimensional UI units (operation units) 130 on the front face of the transparent panel.
Information regarding the position and shape of the three-dimensional UI unit 130 (for example, coordinates on the touch panel, shapes, sizes, and heights of the bottom face and the front face, and the like) is registered in a memory or the like in the controller 140. For example, when the three-dimensional UI unit 130 is a cylindrical knob, the coordinates of the center of the bottom face of the knob, the radius or diameter of the bottom face/front face of the knob, the height of the side face, and the like are registered. When a finger approaching the touch panel 120 is sensed, the controller 140 refers to the information about the registered position and shape of the three-dimensional UI unit 130 and determines whether the finger is a touch operation on the three-dimensional UI unit 130.
In the present embodiment, the three-dimensional UI unit 130 includes at least a cylindrical knob or button (see
The controller 140 includes hardware and/or software resources, and performs overall processing of the input display device using, for example, an arithmetic processing unit, a microcontroller including a ROM/RAM, or the like. For example, display processing of the display 110, touch sensing or touch operation determination (i.e., sense touch position and finger distance, sense rotation amount of finger touched by knob, and determine presence or absence of rotation operation) from an output value of the touch panel 120, and processing of video display/video switching according to the touch sensing or the touch operation determination are performed.
As illustrated in
The operation determination unit 160 determines the presence or absence of a touch operation on the touch panel 120 or a touch operation (for example, a rotation operation on the knob) on the three-dimensional UI unit 130 based on the sensing result of the touch sensing unit 150. Here, the touch includes not only contact of the user's finger to the touch panel 120 or the three-dimensional UI unit 130 but also approach of the finger to the touch panel 120 or the three-dimensional UI unit 130. For example, when the user's finger touches or approaches the touch panel 120, the touch sensing unit 150 senses the presence or absence of a touch based on a change in electrostatic capacitance of a corresponding sensor, and similarly, when the user's finger touches or approaches the three-dimensional UI unit 130, the touch sensing unit senses the presence or absence of a touch on the three-dimensional UI unit 130 based on a change in electrostatic capacitance of a corresponding sensor.
The display control unit 170 displays an image and a video on the display 110, and displays a GUI image related to the operation of the three-dimensional UI unit 130 in an area where the three-dimensional UI unit 130 exists. In addition, the display control unit 170 switches an image to be displayed on the display 110 to another image in response to the operation determination unit 160 determining that a touch operation has been performed.
Next, an outline of a sensing algorithm of the rotation operation on the knob by the input display device 100 of the present embodiment will be described. In the present embodiment, the conventional problem is solved by an algorithm that can stably continue the rotation sensing even when the number of fingers sensed at the time of the rotation operation on the knob increases or decreases.
As illustrated in
Since the amount of movement of the finger during the rotation operation is different for each finger, the rotation angle of the finger having the largest rotation amount is referred to. In
Next, details of the input display device 100 of the present embodiment will be described. First, a method of sensing the rotation amount of the finger will be described. As illustrated in
A finger angle is sensed from coordinates on a circumference of the knob 130 touched by a finger. For example, as illustrated in
Next, the rotation amount (change amount) is calculated from the amount of movement of the finger on the circumference. For example, as illustrated in
Next, a method of determining the presence or absence of the rotation operation from the rotation amount will be described. In the present embodiment, to realize smooth rotation sensing even when the number of sensed fingers increases or decreases during the rotation operation on the knob, the presence or absence of the rotation operation is determined by looking at the magnitude of the amount of movements of all the fingers touching the knob in a composite manner.
As described with reference to
As described with reference to
For example, as illustrated in
On the other hand, when the rotation amount of each of the fingers U1 to U3 is +5° and the rotation amount of the finger U4 is +10° as illustrated in
When the sensing of the finger U4 is added, as illustrated in
As described above, according to the present embodiment, since the presence or absence of the rotation operation on the knob is determined while monitoring the rotation amounts of all the fingers touching the knob 130, it is possible to stably determine the rotation operation on the knob, even if the number of sensed fingers changes.
Next, an example of a flow of an algorithm for determining the rotation operation on the knob in the input display device of the present embodiment is illustrated in
The touch sensing unit 150 measures the electrostatic capacitance of the sensor of the touch panel 120 at a constant cycle, and senses the coordinates of the touch position of the finger from the measurement result. The operation determination unit 160 determines whether the touch sensing unit 150 continuously senses the coordinates of the finger in the knob sensing area (S3), and when it is determined that the coordinates of the finger are continuously sensed, the operation determination unit acquires the coordinates of the touch position of the finger from the touch sensing unit 150 again (S4). When the coordinates are acquired, the operation determination unit 160 determines whether the number of sensed fingers in step S4 is smaller than the number stored in the variable in step S1 (S5), and when the number of sensed fingers is not smaller than the number stored in the variable, the operation determination unit determines whether the number of sensed fingers is increased (S6).
When the number of sensed fingers has not increased in step S6, that is, when there is no change in the number of sensed fingers, the operation determination unit 160 determines whether the sensing coordinates in step S4 and the sensing coordinates in step S1 are the same for any of the fingers (S7). In a case where the sensing coordinates of any of the fingers are the same, the finger does not move, and thus the processing returns to step S3. When the sensing coordinates are not the same, the rotation amount (amount of movement) of each finger is calculated from the difference between the finger angle on the circumference in step S2 and the finger angle calculated from step S4 for the finger whose coordinates have changed in step S7, and the rotation amount is added as a variable (S8).
Next, the operation determination unit 160 determines whether there is a finger whose variable value of the rotation amount exceeds the threshold value (S9), and when there is a finger whose variable value exceeds the threshold value, it is determined that the rotation operation on the knob has been performed (S10). When it is determined that there is the presence of the rotation operation, the operation determination unit 160 resets the rotation amount variable of each finger to the initial value (0) (S11).
On the other hand, in a case where the number of sensed fingers has decreased in step S5, the operation determination unit 160 determines whether a rotation amount counted in the variable of the finger that was sensed and disappeared is the largest among the rotation amounts of all the fingers (S12). In a case where the rotation amount is the largest, the operation determination unit overwrites the rotation amount count values of all the continuously sensed fingers with the count value of the finger that was sensed and disappeared (S13), and the processing returns to step S3.
When the number of sensed fingers is increased in step S6, the operation determination unit 160 allocates, to the added sensed finger, the largest value among the rotation amount count values of all the fingers continuously sensed and the variable values in steps S1 and S2 (S14). The process then proceeds to step S7.
The flow illustrated in
The preferred embodiments of the present disclosure have been described in detail above. However, the present disclosure is not limited to the specific embodiments, and thus various modifications and alterations can be made in the scope of the gist of the invention in the claims.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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2022-202863 | Dec 2022 | JP | national |
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