Apple Inc.

Christoph Horst Krah

Thomas James Wilson

Steve Porter Hotelling

Steven Porter Hotelling

Minh-Dieu Thi Vu

Marduke Yousefpor

John Z Zhong

Wei Chen

Wei Hsin Yao

John Greer Elias

Brian Richards Land

Andrew Bert Hodge

Brian Quentin Huppi

Willem Den Boer

Wayne Carl Westerman

Sean Erik O'Connor

Mohammad Yeke Yazdandoost

Kevin J White

Shahrooz Shahparnia

Christian M Sauer

Anthony Michael Fadell

Du Chen

Richard D Cappels

Bin Huang

Derek Keith Shaeffer

Yafei Bi

Martin Paul Grunthaner

Joshua A Strickon

Hasan Akyol

Vivek Pant

Henry C Jen

Richard D Cappels, Sr

John T Wetherell

Stanley B Wang

Duncan Robert Kerr

Shin Nishibori

Michael F Culbert

Sean S Corbin

Kingsuk Brahma

Wing Kong Low

Stanley Bo-Ting Wang

Jeffrey Braun Doar

Andrew Gong

Erdrin Azemi

Ronil Depak Patel

Ali Moin

Joseph Yitan Cheng

William Matthew Pender Paul

Kaan Emre Dogrusoz

Johanna M Andrews

Thierry S Divel

Chaohao Wang

Hopil Bae

Paolo Sacchetto

Douglas M Farrar

Xiang Lu

Howard H Tang

Kenneth F Gudan

Taif Ahmed Syed

Jesse Michael Devine

Richard James Reeve

Eugene Lvovich Shoykhet

Xiaoqi Zhou

Ali Motamed

Yutaka Hori

Yongjie Jiang

Chang Yong Kang

William Paul

Sean Erik O'connor

A head-mounted device having a plurality of electrodes configured to detect optical events such as the movement of one or more eyes or coarse eye gestures is disclosed. In some examples, the one or more electrodes can be coupled to dielectric elastomer materials whose shape can be changed to vary contact between a user of the head-mounted device and the one or more electrodes to ensure sufficient contact and electrode signal quality. In some examples, the one or more electrodes can be coupled to pressure sensors and control circuitry to monitor and adjust the applied pressure. In some examples, the optical events can be used as triggers for operating the device, including transitioning between operational power modes. In some examples, the triggers can invoke higher resolution sensing capabilities of the head-mounted device. In some examples, the electrodes can be used as an on-head detector to wake-up and/or unlock the device.

Eye detection methods and devices

A display may have an array of light-emitting pixels that display an image in an active area of the display. These light-emitting pixels may be visible light pixels such as red, green, and blue thin-film organic light-emitting diode pixels. The display may also have a border region that runs along a peripheral edge of the active area. The border region may be free of pixels that display image light, whereas the active area may be free of light detectors. A non-optical touch sensor such as a capacitive touch sensor may overlap the active area to gather touch input from the active area. The non-optical touch sensor may not overlap any portion of the border region. In the border region, an optical sensor formed from infrared light-emitting pixels and infrared light-sensing pixels or other optical sensing circuitry may serve as an optical touch sensor.

Displays with optical edge sensors

An electronic device can include integrated micro circuitry configurable for optical sensing and touch and/or proximity sensing. An integrated touch screen can include light emitting diodes or organic light emitting diodes and chiplets. In some examples, the LEDs/OLEDs and chiplets can be disposed in a visible area of the integrated touch screen. In some examples, some or all of the chiplets can be disposed outside of the visible area of the integrated touch screen. In some examples, the chiplets can include display driving circuitry and touch sensing circuitry, and can optionally perform optical sensing using the touch sensing circuitry. In some examples, the chiplets can include separate touch chiplets configured to perform touch sensing (and/or optical sensing) and display chiplets configured to perform display functionality (and optionally provide some switching functionality).

Touch and light sensing using integrated micro circuitry

An electronic device including a touch screen (e.g., an integrated touch screen using chiplets) can be configured for low-noise reference voltage sampling and subsequent touch sensing using the sampled reference voltage. An integrated touch screen can include multiple regions, and each of the multiple regions can include multiple touch node electrodes. Chiplets can be configured to sample one or more reference voltage pins during an analog quiet time to obtain one or more sampled low-noise reference signals localized to each chiplet. The chiplets can then be configured to sense capacitance at some of or at each of the regions (e.g., using chiplets coupled to some of the touch node electrodes of each of the regions and configured to operate in a touch sensing configuration) using the one or more sampled low-noise reference signals.

Methodology and application of sampled low noise reference voltage

Power management for a touch controller is disclosed. The touch controller can include a transmit section for transmitting stimulation signals to an associated touch sensor panel to drive the panel, where the touch controller can selectively adjust the transmit section to reduce power during the transmission. The touch controller can also include a receive section for receiving touch signals resulting from the driving of the panel, where the touch controller can selectively adjust the receive section to reduce power during the receipt of the touch signals. The touch controller can also include a demodulation section for demodulating the received touch signals to obtain touch event results, where the touch controller can selectively adjust the demodulation section to reduce power during the demodulation of the touch signals. The touch controller can also selectively reduce power below present low levels during idle periods.

Power management for touch controller

An integrated touchscreen can include light emitting diodes or organic light emitting diodes (LEDs/OLEDs), display chiplets and touch chiplets disposed in a visible area of the integrated touch screen. For example, the LEDs/OLEDs, display chiplets and touch chiplets can be placed on a substrate by a micro-transfer tool. The integrated touchscreen can also include electrodes disposed in the visible area of the integrated touch screen. The electrodes can be capable of providing display functionality via the one or more display chiplets during display operation (e.g., operating as cathode terminals of the LEDs during the display operation) and capable of providing touch functionality via the touch chiplets during touch operation (e.g., touch node electrodes can be formed from groups of the electrodes and sensed). In some examples, the touch node electrodes can be formed and coupled to touch chiplets via the display chiplets.

Touch sensing utilizing integrated micro circuitry

A switching circuit is disclosed. The switching circuit can comprise a plurality of pixel mux blocks, each of the pixel mux blocks configured to be coupled to a respective touch node electrode on a touch sensor panel, and each of the pixel mux blocks including logic circuitry. The switching circuit can also comprise a plurality of signal lines configured to be coupled to sense circuitry, at least one of the signal lines configured to transmit a touch signal from one of the respective touch node electrodes to the sense circuitry. The logic circuitry in each pixel mux block of the plurality of pixel mux blocks can be configured to control the respective pixel mux block so as to selectively couple the respective pixel mux block to any one of the plurality of signal lines.

Flexible self-capacitance and mutual capacitance touch sensing system architecture

An electronic device can be configured to operate in a plurality of operating modes to generate various stimulation signals for touch sensing operations. Switching circuitry can selectively couple one or more stimulation circuits to touch stimulation circuitry to reduce electromagnetic interference generated during transitions between the plurality of operating modes. The electronic device can transition from a stimulation phase to a termination phase at an arbitrary time, unconstrained by integration time requirements of accompany touch sensing circuitry.

System and method of power management for touch and display supplies in multiple power domains

Mitigation techniques can be used to reduce noise generated by wireless communication circuitry (e.g., near-field communication circuitry) in an electronic device including a display, touch, and wireless communication circuitry. In some examples, a touch screen can have a backplane including a mesh of routing traces connected to an array of chiplets. In some examples, the chiplets can repeat signals to prevent the accumulation of noise induced by an NFC coil. In some examples, the ratio between vertical and horizontal resistances of routing traces can be configured to mitigate noise induced by the coil. In some examples, the routing traces of the mesh can be configured to share a common geometric centroid. In some examples, a plurality of routing traces can be routed in a twisted pair configuration. In some examples, the routing traces and chiplets can be routed to minimize traversal through regions of relatively high electromagnetic field.

Noise mitigation techniques for touch screen in proximity to wireless communication circuitry

In some examples, a touch screen can include touch electrodes that can function as drive (Tx) electrodes and sense (Rx) electrodes during a touch sensing operation of the electronic device. The drive electrodes can include +Tx electrodes and −Tx electrodes that can receive drive signals that can have the same amplitude and frequency and opposite phases, for example. In some examples, the surface areas of the +Tx electrodes and the −Tx electrodes can be the same and the distances of the +Tx electrodes and −Tx electrodes from the Rx electrodes can be different. In some examples, the total charge coupled to a proximate or touching object can be zero, which can mitigate problems associated with ungrounded or poorly grounded objects in contact with the touch screen.

Balanced mutual capacitance systems and methods

Disclosed herein are liquid-crystal display (LCD) touch screens that integrate the touch sensing elements with the display circuitry. The integration may take a variety of forms. Touch sensing elements can be completely implemented within the LCD stackup but outside the not between the color filter plate and the array plate. Alternatively, some touch sensing elements can be between the color filter and array plates with other touch sensing elements not between the plates. In another alternative, all touch sensing elements can be between the color filter and array plates. The latter alternative can include both conventional and in-plane-switching (IPS) LCDs. In some forms, one or more display structures can also have a touch sensing function. Techniques for manufacturing and operating such displays, as well as various devices embodying such displays are also disclosed.

Touch screen liquid crystal display

A power management circuit can comprise a direct-current-to-direct-current (DC-DC) converter and a guard buffer. The guard buffer can be referenced to a system ground and configured to generate a guard ground. The power management circuit can comprise a supply capacitor coupled to the DC-DC converter that can be referenced to system ground in a first mode and referenced to the guard ground in a second mode. A regulator can be coupled to the DC-DC converter and referred to system ground in the first mode, and decoupled and referred to guard ground in the second mode. The DC-DC converter can generate a first voltage in the first mode and a second voltage in the second mode, the second voltage greater than the first.

A multipoint touch surface controller is disclosed herein. The controller includes an integrated circuit including output circuitry for driving a capacitive multi-touch sensor and input circuitry for reading the sensor. Also disclosed herein are various noise rejection and dynamic range enhancement techniques that permit the controller to be used with various sensors in various conditions without reconfiguring hardware.

Multipoint touch surface controller

An electronic device may have a touch sensitive display that is insensitive to the presence of moisture. An array of pixels in the display may be used to display images. A display cover layer may overlap the array of pixels. A light source may illuminate an external object such as a finger of a user when the object contacts a surface of the display cover layer. This creates scattered light that may be detected by an array of light sensors. The light source may supply light to an edge of the display cover layer at an angle that ensures total internal reflection within the display cover layer is sustained across the display cover layer even when the display cover layer is immersed in water or otherwise exposed to moisture.

Electronic devices having moisture-insensitive optical touch sensors

Growing community of inventors

Los Altos, CA, United States of America

Christoph Horst Krah