Talking Multi-Surface Keyboard with Dynamic Key Mapping
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional keyboards, both mechanical and soft, often lead to discomfort and health issues like Carpal Tunnel Syndrome due to static key positions, which restrict natural hand and wrist alignment, resulting in slower data entry and increased fatigue, while mobile devices limit typing to two thumbs, reducing speed and ergonomics.
Innovation Solution
A computer keyboard design with dynamically mapped keys on two back surfaces, allowing hands to maintain a natural posture and enabling all fingers to type, combined with a touch-sensitive interface that provides tactile and auditory feedback, including voice notification for correct entry and error detection.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Device complexity
If keys are positioned statically on a single back surface, then the keyboard structure is simplified, but the operator cannot maintain natural arm and wrist alignment causing stress and fatigue
Solution Approach 1:
The keyboard is divided into two separate back surfaces instead of a single surface. This segmentation allows each surface to be positioned at different angles and orientations, enabling the operator's arms and wrists to align naturally while typing on either surface independently.
Solution Approach 2:
The invention transitions from a single two-dimensional back surface to a three-dimensional configuration with two separate back surfaces that can be positioned at different spatial orientations. This dimensional change allows operators to achieve natural arm and wrist alignment by selecting the appropriate surface based on their posture.
2Ease of operation
If all keys are positioned on the front-facing surface, then the keyboard layout is conventional and familiar, but it forces wrists into unnatural positions leading to Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of positioning keys on the conventional front-facing surface, the invention inverts the key placement to the back surfaces of the keyboard. This inversion allows operators to type from a natural hand position without the harmful effect of wrist bending that occurs with front-facing keys.
3Productivity
If mechanical keys are used on the back surface, then typing speed improves, but the keyboard becomes bulky and heavy
Solution Approach 1:
The invention replaces mechanical key structures with soft keys that provide tactile feedback through deformation. This substitution eliminates the need for heavy mechanical components while maintaining the typing speed benefits of physical key feedback, thereby reducing keyboard weight.
Solution Approach 2:
The invention uses soft keys made from flexible materials that can deform under finger pressure to provide tactile feedback. These thin film structures replace bulky mechanical key switches, achieving fast typing response with minimal weight and volume.
4Weight of stationary object
If soft keys are used instead of mechanical keys, then the keyboard becomes lighter and slimmer, but tactile feedback is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The soft keys are designed to vibrate or deform mechanically when pressed, providing tactile feedback to the operator. This vibration mechanism compensates for the lack of traditional mechanical key feedback while maintaining the lightweight advantage of soft key construction.
Data Source
AI summary
An input device is provided having at least a plurality of touch-sensitive back surfaces, with ability to split into several independent units, with adjustable vertical and horizontal angles between those units; a method of dividing the keys of a keyboard into interface groups; each group having a home key and associated with a finger; a method of dynamically mapping and remapping the home keys of each interface group to the coordinates of the associated fingers at their resting position, and mapping non-home keys around theft associated home keys on the touch-sensitive back surfaces; a method of calculating and remapping home keys and non-home keys when the coordinates of the fingers at the resting position shift during operation; a method of reading each activated key immediately and automatically; a method of detecting typos and grammatical errors and notifying operators using human speech or other communication methods.