International Business Machines Corporation

Elo Touchsystems, Inc.

John J Deacon

Nancy A Burns

Mark S Bishop

Albert Durr Edgar

Michael David Wilkes

Peter C Yanker

Bradley J Beitel

Robert D Gordon

Lonnie S Walling

Charles L Haug

Kenneth B Smith

Steven C Penn

Timothy E Masters

Robert W Knetsch

Ron Lisle

Henry A Grice, Jr

Bridget Ritthaler

A touch system using a plurality of infrared (&ldquo;IR&rdquo;) transmitters and receivers, and a method of determining with increased resolution the location of a touch between the IR transmitters and receivers using on-axis and off-axis detection are disclosed. The inventive touch system and method use, in conjunction with the on-axis and off-axis detection, a coarse and fine sweep of the transmitters and receivers to increase the resolution of identified touch location. The method of determining a touch location involves selection and activation of particular off-axis infrared transmitter and receiver pairs determined from a triangulation interdependence between the x and y coordinates. The increased resolution of the identified touch location is achievable using the inventive system and method without the need for an increased number of IR transmitters and receivers and without the need for higher speed processing capability.

Apparatus and method to improve resolution of infrared touch systems

A system and method for handling audio input/output data translates audio message in a first format from an audio application resident in a virtual machine to an audio voice in a second format which may have no exact match for the original audio message. The invention is used for audio applications which directly write to a particular hardware register of a particular audio card to communicate with an audio card which operates according to completely different principles. The translating program intercepts the audio message written in the first format including a first plurality of audio parameters, compares the audio parameters to those corresponding to a table of audio voices and selects the audio voice which corresponds to a match of the audio parameters in the audio message. If there is no exact match in the table, a variety of techniques are provided to calculate the closest or at least an acceptable audio voice for the original audio message. In one preferred embodiment, the audio parameters are a plurality of FM synthesis parameters and the audio voices are a set of generalized MIDI voices.

Audio I/O instruction interpretation for audio card

A method and apparatus are disclosed for automatic brightness and contrast control in a digital image capture system. A video camera is utilized to scan an image and generate an analog output signal indicative thereof which is utilized to create rows and columns of picture elements. The image is initially scanned utilizing a trial brightness and contrast level and then analyzed to determine the number of saturated picture elements within the scanned image. Thereafter, the brightness and contrast levels are adjusted so that the number of saturated picture elements tends toward a selected small number. In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the analog output signal is digitized and each picture element created therefrom has a digital value associated therewith. Analysis of the scanned image is accomplished by counting the number of picture elements having a selected digital value. Additionally, once the brightness and contrast levels have been adjusted to substantially achieve the desired number of selected picture elements the signal level is increased by the amount of one digital state at each end of the spectrum to avoid wasting the final digital state at each saturated state.

Method and apparatus for automatic brightness and contrast control in an

A user/PC interface system is described which enables the creation and performance of a synchronized audio/visual story on the PC. The interface enables the initial storage of a plurality of visual images. Then, it enables the creation of an audio presentation which includes labels and time indications, certain of which are employed for synchronization purposes. The system is responsive to a label to execute a predetermined command upon the appearance of the label in the audio presentation. The PC is then operated to perform the audio presentation, that performance automatically causing the display of visual images upon the occurrence of labels and time indications. An improved, table-based authoring system is also described for preparation of both the above noted audio and visual presentations. The system relies upon columnar presentations of a tabular form, each column indicating a separate control function (or comment) relating to the audio/visual presentation.

Computer-based, audio/visual creation and presentation system and method

RGB components of pairs of adjacent pels of a captured digitized image are averaged. A perceived color palette is constructed, each color being comprised of functionally combined RGB components of two different input palette colors. An array is formed of continuous colors, each indexed to the perceived palette color to which its RGB components are closest and indicating the two input palette colors defining the respective perceived color. RGB components for each averaged pel pair and the array index are then used to locate the perceived color closest thereto and, the two input palette colors corresponding to the perceived color. These two input colors are then substituted in a display for those of the two averaged pels and the process repeated for all averaged pel pairs. In a preferred embodiment, the difference between the perceived and averaged colors is diffused to adjacent averaged pels. An image is thereby readily produced having substantially more perceived colors than those available in the input palette.

Color mapping system and method

A user/PC interface system is described which enables the creation and performance of a synchronized audio/visual story on the PC. The interface enables the initial storage of a plurality of visual images. Then, it enables the creation of an audio presentation which includes labels and time indications, certain of which are employed for synchronization purposes. The system is responsive to a label to execute a predetermined command upon the appearance of the label in the audio presentation. The PC is then operated to perform the audio presentation, that performance automatically causing the display of visual images upon the occurrence of labels and time indications. A table-based authoring system is also described for preparation of both the above noted audio and visual presentations. The system relies upon columnar presentations of a tabular form, each column indicating a separate control function (or comment) relating to the audio/visual presentation.

A method for viewing a representation of an overscanned captured image on a display that is incapable of displaying the full image as originally captured. The method comprises the steps of (1) digitizing the image to produce a first block of serial data elements where each data element represents at least one picture element of the image, (2) storing a first data block in a data processing memory, (3) computing a second data element block by removing every nth data element from the first data element block, where n is an integer less than the number of first data block elements and said second data block element represents a reduced size image, and (4) displaying the second data element block overlayed upon at least a portion of the digitized image. The invention also includes an apparatus for viewing a representation of an overscanned captured image. The apparatus consists of a camera for digitizing the image, a data processing means including means for storing a first block of data from the digitizing camera representing the captured and digitized image, computing a second data block from a first data block of the digitized image data by removing every nth data element of the first data block, where n is less then the number of elements in the first data block, and a display for accessing the data processor to display the second data block overlayed upon at least a portion of the digitized image.

Growing community of inventors

Austin, TX, United States of America

John J Deacon