Other

Elo Touch Solutions, Inc.

Soundtouch Limited

Ethymonics Limited

Anthony Richard Hardie-Bick

David Lee Sandbach

Christopher Chapman

Clive Kenneth Griffiths

A spherical input devicefor navigating a virtual environmentis activated for touch sensitivity at any point on its surfaceby a capacitive touch sensorthat includes first and second capacitance-sensing elementsand. A first variable capacitanceis formed between a first capacitance-sensing element and a first area of the user's hands through a first hemisphere. A second variable capacitanceis formed between a second capacitance-sensing element and a second area of the user's hands through the second hemisphere. A touch-responsive capacitanceincludes the first variable capacitance in series with the second variable capacitance. Gestural data is derived from the touch-responsive capacitance and device rotations, and transmitted in gestural radio signalsto a receiver. One or both of the capacitance-sensing elements is configured to minimize attenuation of the gestural radio signals passing through the surface.

Touch sensor

A substantially spherical hand-held input device which provides manual data input for navigating a virtual environment and other kinds of user interface, includes a capacitive touch sensor responsive to touch events anywhere on its surface, the touch sensor including a propagation-enhancing portion so that gestural radio signals can be transmitted through the touch-sensitive surface of the input device to a computer system during use, the propagation-enhancing portion being in the form of a spiral-shaped conductor that is also used for capacitance-sensing, and a multi-touch array includes multiple spiral-shaped touch-sensing conductors to provide the propagation-enhancing portion, and the propagation-enhancing portion is a metamaterial at a transmission frequency of the gestural radio signals.

Transmitting data

An apparatus is disclosed for supplying input signals to a computer. A sensor having the form of a sphere has a touch sensitive surface for generating position data for touch events. The sensor includes orientation sensors that determine rotation with respect to the earth's magnetic and gravitational fields. Orientation data may be combined with position data to interpret the orientation of touch events on the surface with respect to the computer's display. Cursor movement or text may be generated from touch events. Preferably the sphere has a roughened surface that generates sound when touched. Position data is generated by processing signals from microphones under the sphere's surface.

Processing signals to determine spatial positions

A touch pad () includes transducers (-) for receiving acoustic signals resulting from touch events, such as the continuous movement of a fingertip across the surface () of the touch pad. The acoustic signals are acquired at different transducer locations in the surface. Signals from different transducers are combined, preferably in antiphase, to improve signal characteristics. The transducer signals are supplied to a stereo analogue to digital converter (). Phase differences () are obtained and compared () with phase difference profiles () of known location, in order to identify the location of the touch event. An index () is used to identify candidate locations to reduce the amount of processing. Interpolation () is used to locate the touch event between profile locations.

Touch pad

A tone generator (501) for a musical synthesizer has digital waveform generators (602,603) arranged such that a proportion of an output from a waveform generator (602) is supplied to a phase modulating input of a next waveform generator (603), wherein a proportion of the output from the last waveform generator in a chain (603) of serially connected waveform generators is supplied to a phase modulating input of the first waveform generator (602) in said chain, thereby providing a degree of recursion. Outputs from a plurality of waveform generators are supplied to a ring modulator (604) for generating harmonic sums and differences of frequencies produced by said recursion. A variable precision waveform lookup table (803) may be used to select a particular harmonic characteristic of tone and a frequency doubler (1001) may be included in the feedback loop to enable tones containing predominantly odd harmonics to be generated.

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London, United Kingdom

Anthony Richard Hardie-Bick