Patent Application
20100039404
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to a user instruction input system and particularly to an integrated input system with a single input interface for being applied to various portable electronic products conveniently.
2. Brief Description of the Related Art
The conventional input device of an electronic product includes the user instruction input device, which is capable of allowing the user interacting with the host, in addition to the disk drive, the optical disk drive and the memory card, which are capable of being read with the host of the electronic product. The user can input an instruction to the electronic product to amend the processing of electronic product directly via the user instruction input device. Generally speaking, the often employed input device are the keyboard for inputting the character and number information, the functional keys for triggering the special functions, the mouse for inputting the directional information, the locus ball, the touchpad or the writing board for inputting the handwritten figures.
Due to different input information, the principle applied with the input device and the structure of the input device are different from each other. Taking the traditional mechanical keyboard as an example, when the user presses a movable key, the touch-induced point under the key is triggered to urge the control chip of the keyboard to send the character or the numeric information corresponding to the touch-induced point to the keyboard transmission line and then the keyboard bus on the mainframe sends out the user instruction to various devices. Besides, the input devices with directional and the dragging movements on a window such as the mouse, the touchpad and the handwriting board are getting popular along with development of the window system. For instance, when the user touches the resistance type touchpad, the circuit at the two conductive films under the touchpad is short and the two-dimensional position of the press point can be figured out via the resistance representing the detected voltage value and the directional information can be transmitted to the host via the touchpad before the user instruction can be sent to various devices by the touchpad bus on the host.
Hence, the input devices with different operation systems have different control circuits for processing the signals thereof and even the bus provided on the host computer for receiving the signals is different from each other. However, for the most electronic products, not a single input device is used by an electronic product only. Taking the computer product as an example, the user needs the functional keys for triggering special functions, the mouse or the touchpad for directional inputs and the handwriting board for inputting the handwriting in addition to the keyboard for keying in the characters and the numbers. Adding one more input device requires various connecting lines, interface systems and spaces for being occupied by the connecting lines and the interface systems. Although the currently used portable electronic product such as the laptop computer has provided the keyboard 42, the functional keys 43 and the touchpad 41 as shown in
Taiwan Patent No. 240050 entitled “A CAPACITANCE TYPE TOUCHPAD INTEGRATED WITH FUNCTIONS OF PRESS KEYS AND HANDWRITING” discloses a capacitance type touchpad, which is divided into a plurality of block zones, and the block zones are defined as key board input zones or directional input zones and a mode switch figure is provided for performing different input mode switches. However, a fixed area with the mode switch figure being touched to operate different mode switches is inconvenient especially for two modes being switched frequently, for instance, switching between the character-numeric input mode and the coordinate movement mode in the document editing program. Meanwhile, when the system is added with more and more modes or input interfaces, it is necessary to provide a large fixed area for the mode switch figure in order to operate the different input mode switches. Under this circumstance, other areas on the touchpad have to be diminished or a bigger sized touchpad has to be used instead. Even if the same zone is pressed multiple times to perform multiple switching, the user still has to operate repeatedly with reference to the user's manual in order to operate the desired input mode.
The preceding capacitance type touchpad combining the functions of press keys and handwriting instead of the conventional mechanical keyboard has achieved the purpose of the touchpad sensing the keyboard interface. However, the keyboard interface, the touchpad directional interface and even the functional key interface are operated independently with the individual mode switch. In this way, the whole dimension of the touchpad still provides the divided spaces, which are the same as the conventional multiple mode type touchpad. As a result, the preceding complicated mode switch is inconveniently operated to the user.
Hence, how to pursue an integrated input system, which is capable of joining all the user's input devices to a single input interface with multiple ways to recognize the user's operations is a goal worth us to care.
In order to overcome the deficiencies of the preceding prior art, an integrated input system according to the present invention includes a touch sensing unit, a signal processing unit, a user instruction recognizing unit and an integration bus. The touch sensing unit has at least an electrical circuit and a transmission conducting line for outputting a sensing signal after being touched with one or multiple objects. The signal processing unit processes the sensing signal and outputs a press point message. The user instruction recognizing unit analyzes a user instruction, which includes a keyboard message input, a triggering action of a functional key or hot key, a directional input with a touchpad or mouse and a drawing information input of a handwriting board, to correspond to the press point message. The user instruction is outputted with the integration bus.
Wherein, the user instruction recognizing unit recognizes the user instruction corresponding to the press point message based on the feature of the press point or the prior press point message and user instruction such as a continuous press point message being regarded as the directional movement or dragging input of the mouse, a click press point message closely after the movement input of the mouse being regarded as a single tap of the mouse.
Besides, the external display unit information can be transmitted to the user instruction recognizing unit via the integration bus as a basis for recognizing the user instruction.
Nevertheless, the prior mode switch operation at the press point can be a basis for recognizing the user instruction. For instance, the click after triggering the keyboard input mode operation is regarded as keyboard message input and the click after triggering the touchpad input mode operation is regarded as a tap input of the directional operation.
An integrated input system according to the present invention further includes a mode switch triggering unit for triggering the operation of mode switch such as triggering the physical press key or triggering the specific zone on the touch sensing unit, or includes a switch action recognizing unit for recognizing the operation of the switch mode such as writing special characters, figures or gestures being regarded as a switch operation of a certain input mode to reach a fast switch instead of installing a switch key.
The detail structure, the applied principle, the function and the effectiveness of the present invention can be more fully understood with reference to the following description and accompanying drawings, in which:
Referring to
Besides, referring to
The control circuit board 3 further includes a signal processing component 30, which is connected to the conductive circuit 22 for processing a touch sensing signal produced by the touch sensing layer and outputting a touch point signal, an user instruction recognizing component 31, which is connected to the signal processing component for analyzing the touch point signal and recognizing the corresponding user instruction such as a keyboard input signal, an action of a functional key or hot key, a directional input of the touchpad or the mouse, a drawing information input of the hand writing board and inputs of other input interfaces, and an integrated bus 32, which is connected to the user instruction recognizing component 31 for outputting the user instruction and inputting information of an external display unit.
The axis locus on the touch sensing layer 21 can be two-dimensional dot distribution axis locus for outputting the sensing signal via the conductive circuit and the signal processing component analyzes the activated positions of the two-dimensional dot distribution locus. In this way, the position of the touch point and the touch movement can be obtained such as the one-dimensional drag and the scrolling.
Another embodiment of the touch sensing board 2 further includes a second axis locus and a conductive circuit for the second axis locus (not shown). The second axis locus is disposed opposite to the touch sensing layer via an insulation layer. The axis locus of the touch sensing layer intersects the second axis locus and is designated as the first axis locus. The first and second axis loci output the respective capacitance and the respective inductance sensing signal to the signal processing component via the respective conductive circuit such that the position of the touch point and the touch movement thereof can be obtained via the induced signals of the first axis locus and the second axis locus.
A further embodiment of the touch sensing board includes a lower conductive film and a conductive circuit. The lower conductive film is disposed opposite to touch sensing layer via a plurality of space dots and the touch sending layer, which is distributed with a high density, can be acted as an upper conductive film. While the touch point is pressed downward, the upper conductive film contacts with the lower conductive film to constitute a short circuit and the position of the touch point and touch movement can be figured out via the voltage difference exerted at two opposite sides of the upper conductive film.
Alternatively, a guiding light plate or an illuminant layer can be provided for the integrated input system of the present invention to illuminate the touch sensing board. Further, the protect layer 20 and the touch sensing layer 21 can be made of a part light-penetrable material such that the figure, the character or the partition line is illuminant. Meanwhile, a control component for the luminance can be provided to control the light source guided by the guiding light plate or the form of the luminance of the illuminant layer such as allowing the touch point being illuminant alone.
In order to allow the user having a physical press feeling while the keys are pressed, a three-dimensional relief design can be provided corresponding to the position of the keyboard or soft pads in different elasticity can be arranged in the touch sensing board.
The preceding input mode can be any of the standard input interfaces or an interface set by the user instead of the preceding the keyboard, the functional key, the touchpad or the handwriting board.
It is appreciated that the integrated input system of the present invention combines all the input devices or interfaces into a single input interface successfully such that the input device of the integrated input system is lighter, thinner and more flexible than the currently used input panel. Further, the input device of the present invention satisfies the integrated design such that the production cost and the assembly cost are much less with advantages of being water-proof, anti-shock and antistatic. Besides, the appearance of the input board has a novel shape instead of the conventional design, which is composed of three areas, the functional key zone, the keyboard zone and the touchpad zone.
While the invention has been described with referencing to the preferred embodiments thereof, it is to be understood that modifications or variations may be easily made without departing from the spirit of this invention, which is defined by the appended claims.
