Patent Grant
7143654
A computer program listing appendix is stored on each of two duplicate compact disks which accompany this specification. Each disk contains computer program listings which illustrate implementations of the invention. The listings are recorded as ASCII text in IBM PC/MS DOS compatible files which have the names, creation dates, and sizes (in bytes) listed below:
A portion of the disclosure of the accompanying Computer Program Listing Appendix contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
This invention relates to liquid stream sensing devices.
In its preferred embodiment, the present invention detects the presence of a liquid stream and the position at which the stream impinges upon a target. The target is formed by one or more sensing devices, each of which producing an output signal when a liquid stream impinges upon a region near to the sensing device. A signal processor coupled to the sensor array for produces a position signal that indicates the presence, location, trajectory or velocity of the stream that impinges on the sensor(s).
The sensing devices may be located along a straight or curved line and the signal processor produces a position signal that indicates the location of said stream relative to said line. Alternatively, the sensors may be organized in a two dimensional array on a target surface and the signal processor generates an output signal that indicates the location where the stream impinges on the target surface.
The individual sensors may produce a binary signal indicating whether or not the stream impacts the target surface in the vicinity of the sensor, or may produce an output signal having a magnitude indicating the intensity with which the stream impinges on the target surface in the vicinity of the individual sensor. In either case, the signal processor may derive a position signal from the weighted combination of output signals produced by different ones of said sensing devices, thereby providing a position signal with greater resolution.
The individual sensors may advantageously take the form of a transducer attached to a flexible membrane which detects deformation of the membrane caused by the stream impacting the target in the vicinity of the sensor. The transducer may be a piezoelectric element, such as a ceramic “buzzer,” affixed to the membrane by a suitable adhesive.
The signal processing circuit may advantageously includes a analog signal processor including an amplifier and an envelope follower circuit which supplies signal values to a microprocessor that in turn produces a desired output for controlling a particular application.
The stream sensing mechanism contemplated by the invention may be used in a variety of control applications, such as interactive games, stream control systems, and any other application in which the employs means for sensing the presence, position, trajectory or intensity of a liquid stream.
These and other features and advantages of the invention will be better understood by considering the following detailed description.
In the detailed description which follows, frequent reference will be made to the attached drawings, in which:
The present invention may be used in a variety of applications in which it is desirable to detect the presence, intensity or location of a liquid stream.
An illustrative embodiment of the invention shown in
In the illustrative embodiment, the personal computer 109 is programmed to provide an interactive game in which the player holds the squirt gun 102 and directs it at the target surface holding the sensor array 100. The player views the display produced by the PC 109 on a monitor 111.
The program that executes on the PC 109 reads the stream position data from the microcontroller 107 sent over a serial data link seen at 108 at a rate of 100 samples per second. Although the input sensors form a relatively low resolution 4×4 grid, the PC software provides higher output resolution and reduces sampling jitter by using temporal supersampling. For each frame, the PC game program computes the centroid of the positions of all of the activated sensors and feeds this value into a low-pass smoothing filter (mean filter) to produce a final position stream position for that frame as indicated at 121 on the monitor 111. The software displays this computed centroid position of the stream on the PC monitor 111 to give the game player a real time indication of the position at which the liquid stream.
The game program that executes on the PC 109 operates as a variant of Whac-A-Mole®, a classic carnival game marketed by BOB'S SPACE RACERS, INC. of Daytona Beach Fla. In this liquid stream version, the game player aims a series of jumping hamsters which appear on the monitor 111, with input position on the target array 100 corresponding to position on the screen 111 above. A successful hit turns a displayed hamster at that position yellow, makes it scream and spin, and rewards the player with ten points. The parabolic trajectories of the hamsters conceal the grid-like arrangement of sensors, resulting in a fluid transition between input and output. The C++ source language for the game software executes on the PC 100 is listed in the accompanying CD-ROM Computer Program Listing Appendix.
The hardware used to implement this illustrative embodiment of the invention is inexpensive, reliable, fast and physically robust. The array 100 is formed using sixteen piezoelectric ceramic buzzers, one of which is seen at 201 in
Each piezoelectric ceramic sensor, seen at 400 in
The embodiment described above employs the digital inputs to the microcontroller 105 because those inputs can be read more rapidly, and the low resolution provided by the digital inputs was sufficient for creating the interactive activity needed for the game application. An alternate embodiment could read analog signal amplitudes rather than digital thresholds, thereby indicating the intensity with which the stream impinges upon the region in the vicinity of each sensor. By measuring the amount of deformation at each sensor position, an alternative arrangement can use fewer sensors and calculate the stream position at a location between two or more sensors. Signal processing techniques that create smooth visual output that corresponds to low resolution, discrete inputs are described, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 6,381,377 entitled “Generating a high resolution scan image with a low resolution scan sensor” and U.S. Pat. No. 6,005,682 entitled “Resolution enhancement by multiple scanning with a low-resolution, two-dimensional sensor array,” the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.
An arrangement of this type is shown in
The two sensor arrays described above employ sensors arranged to form a two-dimensional target surface; however, for some applications, a linear (one dimensional) array of sensors may be used. By way of example, a one-dimensional array of sensors may be used to produce an output data value whose magnitude is controlled by altering the position at which a liquid stream impinges upon a linear target. By way of example, a fixed nozzle can direct a stream in a trajectory toward a linear target, and the point at which the stream contacts the target may be detected to determine the liquid pressure at the nozzle. The same arrangement may be used as an accelerometer since, when the point at which the stream contacts the target array changes as the acceleration forces deflect the trajectory of the stream. In still another arrangement, a stream containing ions may be deflected by amount related to the field strength and/or the charge-to-mass relationship of the ion stream, so that the stream position indicator acts as a field strength detector or a mass-spectrometer.
The liquid stream may be produced by a variety of different devices, depending on the application. In a decorative water fountain, car wash, or industrial application, an array of sensors may be used in a feedback arrangement to control one or more valves in order to regulate the water pressure to ensure that the stream assumes a desired configuration and impinges on the target array at a desired location.
It is to be understood that the methods and apparatus which have been described above are merely illustrative applications of the principles of the invention. Numerous modifications may be made by those skilled in the art without departing from the true spirit and scope of the invention.
This application is a Non-Provisional of, and claims the benefit of the filing date of, U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60/528,873 filed on Dec. 11, 2003, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.
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| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20050172728 A1 | Aug 2005 | US |
| Number | Date | Country | |
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| 60528873 | Dec 2003 | US |
