Smartwatch Perimeter Light Sensing for In-Air Gesture Control
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Solution Overview
Problem
Wearable devices, particularly smartwatches, face challenges due to their smaller displays, which result in a significant portion of the screen area being non-active peripheral space, making user interfaces awkward and inefficient.
Innovation Solution
The integration of light detectors around the display perimeter to detect ambient light changes, allowing the processor to identify gestures and adjust display activation based on light obstruction, and the use of a fiber optic faceplate to enhance visual presentation and power management.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Volume of moving object
If the display size is reduced for wearable devices, then the device becomes more wearable and compact, but the percentage of screen area lost to non-active peripheral portions increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extends the display functionality into the third dimension by projecting images onto a transparent or translucent cover glass surface, allowing the display area to extend beyond the physical display panel boundaries. This dimensional extension effectively increases the active display area without increasing the footprint of the display hardware, resolving the contradiction between device compactness and active display area.
2Adaptability or versatility
If traditional mobile phone user interfaces are used on smartwatches, then the interface design remains consistent across devices, but the interface becomes awkward and difficult to use on the smaller display
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements dynamic gesture recognition that adapts to the user's actions in real-time. The system detects gestures such as waving, circling, or tapping motions in the air above the display and translates them into interface commands. This dynamic approach allows the interface to be controlled without direct contact, making it much easier to operate on the small display while maintaining consistency with the wearable device form factor.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces traditional mechanical or direct-touch interface interaction with optical field-based gesture recognition. By using light detectors to sense movements in the air above the display, the system substitutes physical contact or button presses with wireless, contactless gesture control, significantly improving ease of operation on the small wearable display.
3Adaptability or versatility
If light detectors are added around the display perimeter to detect gestures, then gesture detection capability is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent makes the light detectors serve multiple functions: they detect ambient light levels for automatic brightness adjustment, detect finger proximity for touch activation, and detect gesture motions in the air above the display. By making these sensors multi-functional, the patent improves gesture detection capability without proportionally increasing device complexity, as the same hardware components perform multiple tasks.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent combines multiple sensing functions into a single integrated light detection system. Rather than adding separate sensors for ambient light, touch detection, and gesture recognition, the system uses the same perimeter-mounted light detectors for all three functions, merging these capabilities into one unified component set that reduces overall device complexity.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
Enables efficient detection of gestures and dynamic display control, optimizing power consumption and enhancing user interaction on the smaller display area.
Implementation Method 1
a fiber optic faceplate mounted in the housing above the display, acting as a zero-depth window for the display pixels in the active area of the substrate, wherein a distance between a bottom surface of the faceplate and the light detectors is sufficiently small to limit the optical fibers through which light rays can pass to each of the detectors
Implementation Method 2
the computer program code, when read by the processor, causes the processor to identify (i) an in-air wave gesture by a light obstructive object that traverses the airspace above the display, and (ii) a direction of the gesture
Data Source
AI summary
An electronic watch, including a display featuring pixels, and a printed circuit board (PCB) surrounding the pixels, a first group of light detectors on the PCB on the right circumference of the pixels, that, when activated, output values of ambient light received by the detectors in that group, a second group of light detectors on the PCB on the left circumference of the pixels, that, when activated, output values of ambient light received by the detectors in that group, a processor connected to the first and second groups, that activates each group and stores the group output values, a computer-readable medium storing code which causes the processor to identify an in-air wave gesture by an object that traverses the airspace above the display, and a direction of the gesture, wherein the direction is left to right or right to left, based on outputs of the first and second groups.