© 2014 IPPASA, LLC. A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material that 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. 37 CFR § 1.71(d).
This disclosure relates to a manual controller for manipulating images or symbols on a visual display and, in particular, to a controller that can be constructed with user-arranged matable building elements to exhibit a customized shape and style depending on user game-inspired, ergonomic, or appearance preferences.
Manual controllers for manipulating images or symbols on a visual display of a computer device include, for example, joysticks, game pads, steering wheels, guns, mice, remote devices for television, stored multi-media display and recording machines, cellular telephones, portable video game systems, and portable multi-media devices. One prevalent type of manual controller comprises a control section having a plurality of buttons that the user presses to enter commands and hand grips that the user holds when the user operates the manual controller. Conventional manual controllers are distributed with a predetermined appearance and ergonomic structure. Manual controllers are operated by a variety of users with different hand sizes. Moreover, each user has different ergonomic and style preferences.
A configurable manual controller for manipulating images or symbols on a display is adapted for construction with matable building elements arranged by a user. The user forms the manual controller to exhibit a customized shape and ornamental appearance reflecting the user's game-inspired, ergonomic, or style preferences.
The configurable manual controller comprises an exoskeleton having an interior region and a patterned surface portion. The interior region is configured to confine internal electrical components that are operatively connected to and cooperate with control actuators to produce signals for manipulating images or symbols on the display. The control actuators are positioned for tactile manipulation by a user to cause production of the signals. The patterned surface portion is configured to support a set of building elements. The building elements in the set are configurable for mating to the patterned surface portion of the exoskeleton and to one another. This enables a user to customize the controller to an arbitrary shape and ornamental appearance, according to the user's game-inspired, ergonomic, or style preferences.
In a first embodiment, the exoskeleton of a controller comprises a main section and a hand grip section, either or both of which include at least one patterned surface portion on which a user can build with the building elements to create a controller of various shapes and appearances according to the user's preference. This can be accomplished by one or both of attachment and add-on techniques. In a second embodiment, the exoskeleton of a controller comprises a unitary main and hand grip section that includes at least one patterned surface portion on which a user can build with the building elements to create a customized controller. The resulting arbitrary controller configuration determined by a user can be a recreation equipment item, for example as described below, a golf club or a baseball bat.
Additional aspects and advantages will be apparent from the following detailed description of preferred embodiments, which proceeds with reference to the accompanying drawings.
As shown in
Patterned surface portion 20, which in this embodiment covers the exterior side surface of main casing 16, includes a surface pattern in the form of an array of mutually spaced-apart cylindrical mating features or bosses 80. Each of hand grips 30 and 32 has a handle mount 82 on which is formed an array of mutually spaced-apart cylindrical mating features or recesses 84. The diameter and depth of each recess 84 and the spacing distances between adjacent ones of recesses 84 are established so that recesses 84 mate with corresponding bosses 80 and provide a snug, releasable attachment of each of hand grips 30 and 32 to main casing 16.
Left-hand grip 30 includes a five-section body element 90 to which the remaining building elements attach. A mounting element 92 has three recesses (not shown) that mate with three corresponding bosses 80 of a mounting section 94 of body element 90 to form handle mount 82 (
Patterned surface portion 120 is configured to receive matable building elements 122. Building elements 122 in this embodiment are preferably small molded plastic components that are stackable upon one another, like small bricks, to create a desired object. (Building elements 122 intended to provide a finished surface typically do not have top surface mating features that would enable stacking of another layer of building elements.) Building elements 122 can be of different colors. Suitable building elements 122 include LEGO toy bricks, available from Interlego AG, Zug, Switzerland.
A preferred building element 122 has on its bottom side recesses 84 that are sized to mate with spatially corresponding bosses 80 so that building element 122 can be affixed to and thereby cover part of patterned surface portion 120. Skilled persons will appreciate that a building element 122 having multiple recesses 84 on its bottom side is configured so that adjacent recesses 84 are separated by the same distance as that separating corresponding adjacent bosses 80 in patterned surface portion 120. The spaced-apart bottom side recesses 84 of building element 122 that are sized to mate with spatially corresponding bosses 80 of patterned surface portion 120 define a recess feature pattern that is complementary to patterned surface portion 120.
Either building element 122 or 122a has on its top side the absence or presence of a matable feature.
For purposes of simplicity and uniformity, a user preferably constructs a manual controller with a set of stackable building elements in which the bottom side feature and the top side feature mates with and operationally matches, respectively, the features in a patterned surface portion of the manual controller. Operationally match is defined to mean that a top side feature is matable to the bottom side feature of the same building element. This is the situation illustrated in
Exoskeleton 142 has patterned surface portions 170 and 172 that together cover most of the exterior of exoskeleton 142. Similar to patterned surface portion 20 of main casing 16 of manual controller 10 shown in
It will be obvious to those having skill in the art that many changes may be made to the details of the above-described embodiments without departing from the underlying principles of the invention. The scope of the present invention should, therefore, be determined only by the following claims.
This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/536,416 filed on Nov. 7, 2014, which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/155,013, filed Jan. 14, 2014, now U.S. Pat. No. 8,894,066, which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/347,414, filed Jan. 10, 2012, now U.S. Pat. No. 8,628,085, which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/795,540, filed Jun. 7, 2010, now U.S. Pat. No. 8,091,892, which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/278,102, filed Aug. 1, 2008, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,731,191, which is a 371 of PCT/US07/03462, filed Feb. 9, 2007, which claims benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60/772,343, filed Feb. 10, 2006. The disclosure of each of the aforementioned patent applications is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.
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