Stylus Input Tool with Keyboard Recess for Tactile Feedback
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing input device systems, particularly those incorporating styluses, face challenges such as lack of tactile feedback, redundancy with ancillary touch screens, and complexity, leading to increased cost and user difficulty.
Innovation Solution
A computing system that integrates a stylus with a keyboard or input device, allowing the stylus to function as both a touch-sensitive input tool and a mountable device with sensors, providing haptic feedback and scrolling inputs, and featuring internal displays or indicators for user interface adjustments.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If a stylus is used as a standalone input device, then it provides touch-sensitive input capability, but it lacks tactile feedback and requires ancillary touch screens which increase system complexity and cost
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines the stylus with the keyboard assembly by providing a recess in the keyboard that receives and retains the stylus. The stylus is integrated into the keyboard structure, allowing it to function as both a writing tool and a input device with tactile feedback from the keyboard surface, eliminating the need for separate ancillary touch screens.
Solution Approach 2:
The stylus is designed to serve multiple functions: it can be used for writing on the display, as a pointing device, and as a tactile input device when placed on the keyboard. The keyboard itself serves dual purposes as both a key input device and a support structure for the stylus, reducing overall system complexity.
2Adaptability or versatility
If ancillary touch screens are added to provide additional input functionality, then input versatility is improved, but system size and cost increase
Solution Approach 1:
The keyboard is designed to accommodate multiple input methods simultaneously - traditional key input, stylus writing on the display, and stylus placement on the keyboard for tactile feedback input. This multi-functional approach provides input versatility without requiring separate dedicated hardware for each input type, thereby avoiding increased system size.
3Adaptability or versatility
If multiple input devices are integrated into the system, then input functionality is enhanced, but device complexity and cost increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the stylus retention function with the keyboard assembly by incorporating a recess directly into the keyboard structure. This integration eliminates the need for separate mounting mechanisms and reduces the number of discrete components, thereby reducing device complexity while maintaining enhanced input functionality.
Solution Approach 2:
The keyboard serves multiple functions: traditional key input, structural support for the display, and a tactile feedback surface for stylus input. This multi-functionality reduces the need for separate dedicated components for each function, thereby reducing overall device complexity while maintaining versatile input capabilities.
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
The system reduces redundancy and complexity by utilizing the stylus to replace or replicate functions of ancillary touch screens, providing tactile feedback, and simplifying user interactions while reducing system size and cost.
Implementation Method 1
the sensor being a capacitive sensor configured to sense a change in capacitance in response to a presence of an object at the tool retention portion
Data Source
AI summary
Computing systems and input devices can include a chassis with a computing device and an input tool with a sensor, such as a pen- or rod-like input tool, that can be positioned relative to the chassis in multiple configurations. In one configuration, the tool can be spaced away from the chassis and its sensor output can cause a first output signal in response to input provided to the sensor. In another configuration, the tool can be contacting the chassis and its sensor output can cause a second output signal in response to input provided to the sensor. For example, an input tool can be stowed in a recess of a keyboard housing or device chassis, and the input tool can produce a first output when it is in the recess and a second input when it has been removed from the chassis.