Keyboard Touch Sensor Gesture Control and Backlight Feedback
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional keyboards and touchpads require users to repeatedly move their hands between the keyboard and touchpad, leading to significant cumulative time and focus requirements, and integrating a touch sensor with a keyboard can result in a less user-friendly and bulky design.
Innovation Solution
A keyboard with a touch sensor that alters operation parameters based on user inputs, such as gestures, to reduce the need for hand movement, while also controlling a backlight to provide feedback and indicate valid operations, using a method that involves detecting inputs, determining gestures, and adjusting parameters like sensitivity and mode switching criteria.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If a touch sensor is integrated with a keyboard, then the need for hand movement between keyboard and touchpad is reduced, but the keyboard becomes bulky and less user-friendly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines the touch sensor functionality directly into the keyboard structure by using the keyboard keys themselves as touch sensor elements. The touch sensor layer is integrated with the key structure, allowing the same surface to serve both as a physical keyboard and a touch-sensitive surface, thereby eliminating the need for a separate touchpad while maintaining a compact form factor.
Solution Approach 2:
The keyboard keys are designed to serve multiple functions: they can be pressed physically for traditional keyboard input, and they can also detect touch gestures when pressed lightly or hovered over. This multi-functionality allows the keyboard to replace both the traditional keyboard and touchpad functions, reducing hand movement requirements without adding separate components.
2Adaptability or versatility
If a touch sensor is integrated with a keyboard, then touch functionality is added, but the keyboard becomes less user-friendly
Solution Approach 1:
The keyboard implements dynamic operation parameters that automatically adjust based on detected usage patterns. The system learns from user behavior and adapts gesture recognition sensitivity, threshold values, and mode switching criteria to optimize for each user's typing style and preferences, thereby maintaining high user-friendliness while providing versatile touch functionality.
Solution Approach 2:
The keyboard performs self-learning and self-adjustment by automatically analyzing user input patterns and modifying its operation parameters without requiring manual configuration. The system autonomously optimizes gesture recognition and mode switching behavior based on observed usage, making the interface adapt to the user rather than requiring the user to configure the system.
3Productivity
If operation parameters are altered dynamically, then user interaction efficiency is improved, but the system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The keyboard incorporates a feedback mechanism that continuously monitors user interactions and uses this information to dynamically adjust operation parameters. The system analyzes gesture accuracy, typing patterns, and mode switching frequency to automatically optimize sensitivity thresholds and recognition criteria, improving interaction efficiency through real-time adaptation based on actual usage feedback.
Data Source
AI summary
There is described a method of controlling a keyboard comprising a backlight and a touch sensor, the method comprising: detecting, using the touch sensor, a gesture performed by a user of the keyboard; and controlling the backlight so as to emit light in dependence on the detected gesture.