Keyboard Touch Sensor Lever Structure for Reduced Hand Movement
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional keyboards and touchpads require frequent hand movement between typing and interacting, leading to inefficiency and potential user discomfort, and integrating a touch sensor with a keyboard can result in bulkiness and reduced user friendliness.
Innovation Solution
A key pressing mechanism with a first and second lever system, allowing for integrated touch sensing and reduced hand movement, featuring a hole of elongated shape for pin movement along a first axis, oblong or oval shape, and varying friction to enhance user interaction.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of time
If a touch sensor is integrated with a keyboard, then the need for hand movement between typing and touchpad interaction is reduced, but the keyboard becomes bulky and less user-friendly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines the touch sensor and keyboard into a single integrated device, merging two previously separate components (keyboard and touchpad) into one unified structure. This allows users to perform both typing and touch-based gestures without moving their hands between separate devices, directly reducing hand movement time while maintaining a compact form factor through shared structural elements.
2Ease of operation
If a touch sensor is integrated with a keyboard, then typing and touch interaction can be performed without hand movement, but the keyboard structure becomes more complex
Solution Approach 1:
The integrated keyboard-touch sensor device provides multiple functions within a single structure: it can detect key presses through mechanical switches, sense touch gestures through capacitive sensors, and provide backlighting. This multi-functionality allows the device to serve both as a traditional keyboard and as a touch-sensitive interface, improving ease of operation by enabling diverse input methods without requiring separate dedicated devices.
3Measurement precision
If an elongated hole is used for pin movement in the lever system, then the lever can move along the first axis for touch sensing, but movement along the perpendicular second axis is prevented
Solution Approach 1:
The lever mechanism employs an asymmetric elongated hole design where the hole's dimensions and orientation are specifically tailored to allow movement only along the first axis (perpendicular to the keyboard surface) while preventing movement along the second axis (parallel to the surface). This asymmetric geometry enables precise one-dimensional touch sensing in the vertical direction while maintaining structural stability against lateral displacements, achieving measurement precision without requiring complex constraints.
Data Source
AI summary
There is described a touch sensor for a keyboard, the touch sensor comprising one or more holes. Also described is a keyboard comprising the touch sensor as well as methods of manufacturing the touch sensor and the keyboard.