Non-Detectable Stencil for Touch-Sensitive Surface Pattern Recognition
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing interactive touch-sensitive surfaces, such as those on smartphones and tablets, lack variability in user interaction, limiting the scope for creative play and function activation in toys that interact with these surfaces.
Innovation Solution
A method involving a structure with marked positions that cannot be registered by the touch-sensitive surface, allowing flexible units to create unique patterns and movements, enabling direct interaction between physical and virtual worlds, and allowing users to create new functions by positioning and moving flexible units across the touch-sensitive surface.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If a touch-sensitive surface is used for interactive toys, then the ability to register touch input is improved, but the scope for variation in user interaction and creative play is limited
Solution Approach 1:
A transparent overlay sheet with marked positions is introduced as an intermediary between the user's touch input and the touch-sensitive surface. This overlay sheet guides users to specific marked positions on the surface, translating physical placement into defined digital patterns without requiring complex sensor arrays or processing systems. The overlay acts as a mediator that simplifies the interaction while expanding creative possibilities.
Solution Approach 2:
The interaction surface is segmented into discrete marked positions through the overlay sheet design. Instead of requiring continuous or complex touch patterns, the system divides the interaction into distinct, identifiable positions marked on the overlay. Each marked position can be independently activated, allowing users to create various patterns by combining these segmented positions in different arrangements.
2Ease of operation
If predefined patterns are used on the touch screen, then the interaction guidance is improved, but the creativity and uniqueness of user-generated patterns are limited
Solution Approach 1:
The system transitions from static, fixed patterns to dynamic, user-configurable patterns. The overlay sheet includes multiple marked positions that can be selectively activated based on where the user places their finger or touch device. By combining different marked positions in various arrangements, users can create unique, dynamic patterns that adapt to their creative intentions rather than being constrained to predetermined designs.
Solution Approach 2:
The marked positions on the overlay sheet serve multiple functions: they guide users to specific locations, define pattern boundaries, and enable various interaction modes. The same overlay sheet can support different pattern types, game modes, and creative expressions, making the system universally applicable to diverse interaction scenarios without requiring separate predefined patterns for each function.
Data Source
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AI summary
The present invention relates to a method of providing input to an electronic unit comprising a touch-sensitive surface that is configured for registering application of touch by a flexible unit and a toy comprising an electronic unit comprising a touch-sensitive surface and a structure; the structure configured from a material that cannot be registered by the touch-sensitive surface, and it comprises, either at the periphery or within the periphery, at least one marked position. One or more flexible units that comprise(s) material that can be registered by the touch-sensitive surface, wherein the one or more flexible units extend(s) past the top side of the structure and to the bottom side of the structure, to the effect that the registration of a flexible unit is conditioned by the configuration of the at least one marked position.