Touch-Sensitive Game Piece Tracking Without Wireless Components
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional approaches to integrating toys with touch screen devices are limited in tracking the presence, position, and orientation of physical game pieces or toys without requiring complex and expensive electrical components, hindering new interactive experiences.
Innovation Solution
A touch-sensitive system that includes peripheral devices with touch points and an electronic device equipped with a processor, touch surface, actuator, receiver, transmitter, and memory, which can detect and identify touches to track the presence, position, and orientation of toys, enabling communication and unlocking of content without complex components.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If wired or wireless communication components (USB connection) are used to integrate toys with video games, then communication between toy and device is enabled, but device complexity and cost increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces electrical/wireless communication systems with a mechanical touch-based communication system. The toy physically touches the touch screen to communicate presence, position, and identity information, eliminating the need for USB connections, Bluetooth modules, or other electronic communication components in the toy.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent uses the touch screen interface as an intermediary to copy and transmit information about the toy's state. Instead of direct electronic communication, the system creates a digital representation of the toy's physical state through touch inputs, allowing the video game to track and respond to the toy without complex electrical components.
2Measurement precision
If complex electrical components are used to track toy presence, position, and orientation, then tracking accuracy is improved, but manufacturing cost and device complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent makes the touch screen serve multiple functions: it acts as both the display interface and the sensing mechanism for tracking the toy. The same touch screen hardware that users interact with for gaming also detects the toy's presence, position, and orientation, eliminating the need for separate sensors and reducing manufacturing costs.
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses the existing touch screen infrastructure to track the toy, making the device track itself through the interaction interface. The touch screen naturally detects contact points and can infer position and orientation data from touch patterns without requiring additional dedicated tracking components.
Data Source
AI summary
There is provided a system and method for communicating with a first peripheral device, of a plurality of peripheral devices, using a touch-sensitive system that has a processor and a touch surface. According to an exemplary embodiment, a method includes detecting, using the processor, a plurality of touches on the touch surface of the touch-sensitive system that are made by the first peripheral device. The method further includes identifying, using the processor, the first peripheral device based on the plurality of touches on the touch surface of the touch-sensitive system that are made by the first peripheral device. The method additionally includes communicating data, using the processor, to a receptive circuit of the first peripheral device in response to the identifying of the first peripheral device.