Touchpad Cursor Step Control for Operation Feeling
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing input apparatuses for touchpads often result in a mismatch between the movement amount of a cursor and the user's intended operation feeling due to arbitrary movement amounts, leading to a sense of discord for the user.
Innovation Solution
An input apparatus that includes a touchpad for detecting input positions, a display unit, and a calculation device to move the cursor in steps aligned with the input position variations, calculating movement steps and adjustment amounts to match the user's intended operation, ensuring the cursor movement resembles the user's input feeling.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If the cursor is moved by converting the movement amount of input touch into a number of steps at intervals of a predetermined period, then the cursor movement can be controlled in discrete steps, but the movement amount of the cursor may not match the movement amount of the input touch, leading to a sense of discord for the user
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies dynamics by making the cursor movement amount variable rather than fixed. The calculation device dynamically adjusts the cursor movement distance based on the actual finger movement distance detected by the touchpad, allowing the system to adapt between discrete step control and continuous movement matching, thereby resolving the contradiction between step-based control and movement accuracy
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the parameter of cursor movement from a fixed predetermined distance to a variable distance that corresponds to the actual input movement. By calculating the ratio between finger movement distance and predetermined unit distance, the system adjusts the cursor movement parameter dynamically, ensuring both step-based control and accurate reflection of user intent
2Productivity
If the movement amount of input touch is arbitrary but the number of steps of the cursor is an integer, then the cursor can be moved in discrete steps, but the movement amount of the cursor cannot match the movement amount of the input touch
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by accumulating the remainders from previous calculations before determining the final cursor movement. Instead of discarding the fractional parts when calculating steps, the system stores them and adds them to subsequent calculations, ensuring that accumulated small movements eventually result in appropriate cursor steps, thereby improving both efficiency and precision
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements feedback by using the remainder from each calculation cycle as input for the next cycle. This feedback mechanism ensures that arbitrary input movements are progressively translated into appropriate cursor steps over multiple cycles, maintaining both the efficiency of discrete step movement and the precision of matching user intent
Data Source
AI summary
An input apparatus includes: a touchpad that detects an input position; a display unit; and a calculation device configured to: move a display position of a cursor in steps in an identical direction to a variation direction of the input position detected by the touchpad every time the input position varies in an identical direction by a predetermined unit amount; calculate the number of movement steps and the adjustment amount by dividing a value by the predetermined unit amount when the variation direction of the input position calculated during a first predetermined period is equal to a variation direction of the input position calculated during a second predetermined period, the value obtained by adding the adjustment amount calculated during the second predetermined period to the displacement amount calculated during the first predetermined period, the second predetermined period being a predetermined period immediately preceding the first predetermined period.