Touch-Sensitive Keyboard Using Defined Zones for Gesture Input
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional touchscreen keyboards on mobile devices are difficult to use accurately due to the small screen size, requiring eye-hand coordination and significant space, leading to errors and distractions, especially in situations where attention cannot be diverted from the environment.
Innovation Solution
A touch-sensitive keyboard using defined zones that allows input with simple straight-line gestures, eliminating the need for eye-hand coordination and accommodating small areas, enabling use with one finger or alternative body parts like the tongue, and providing a wide range of keystrokes without visual attention.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If conventional touchscreen keyboards are used on mobile devices, then a broad set of keystrokes can be provided, but the small screen size makes them difficult to press accurately and requires significant space
Solution Approach 1:
The keyboard is segmented into zones rather than individual buttons, allowing gesture-based input across distributed areas. This segmentation enables a broad set of keystrokes to be accessed through zone combinations rather than requiring numerous discrete buttons on a small screen.
Solution Approach 2:
The system transitions from two-dimensional button grids to three-dimensional gesture space by incorporating motion vectors (direction, distance, velocity) as additional input dimensions. This allows numerous keystrokes to be encoded in gesture parameters rather than requiring proportional screen real estate.
2Measurement precision
If conventional touchscreen keyboards are used, then visual attention and eye-hand coordination are required to type accurately, but this removes attention from changing circumstances
Solution Approach 1:
The system uses the user's existing hand movements and gestures for input rather than requiring separate visual attention and coordinated finger movements. The gesture recognition system processes natural motions that users are already making, eliminating the need to divert visual attention from the environment.
Solution Approach 2:
The system replaces the mechanical coordination of eye-hand movements with automated gesture recognition algorithms that process motion data. This substitution eliminates the need for visual feedback loops and conscious coordination, allowing users to input text through subconscious or peripheral-aware gestures.
3Adaptability or versatility
If gesture-based character input technology with nuanced loops and variations is used, then keystrokes can be recognized, but the system is prone to error due to demanding gestures
Solution Approach 1:
The system changes the parameters used for gesture recognition from complex shape features (loops, curves, directions) to simpler motion parameters (zone transitions, gesture counts, basic vectors). This parameter simplification reduces the cognitive and motor demands on users while maintaining recognition capability, thereby reducing errors.
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses partial gesture information (zone transitions and basic motion vectors) rather than requiring complete, precise gesture execution. This partial action approach reduces the burden on users to perform perfectly nuanced gestures while still enabling reliable keystroke recognition through pattern matching.
Data Source
AI summary
A touch-screen/gesture based keyboard using gestures on defined zones for providing keyboard input that is simplified to accommodate a small area, doesn't require eye-hand coordination, and can be used with as few as one finger on the same hand holding the device, without looking or employed in Virtual or Augmented applications. The inventive device includes a software application running on a position and movement detection device to provide keyboard operations. The app is a code that runs on a computer device and provides for zones that are monitored for movement, applying that movement to a prescribed chart and delivering the resulting feedback as keystrokes.