Patent ID: 9349045
Filing Date: 2016-05-24
CPC Classification: G01C,G06F,G06K

Claim Text:
1. A method for operating an input apparatus for an electronic appliance in a motor vehicle, the input apparatus comprising a display device, an input panel and at least one controller that provides a database, an evaluation device, a handwriting recognition device and a search device, the method comprising: receiving a character trace from a user on the input panel while the user draws the character trace in order to input a character or a group of characters on the input panel; using the evaluation device to sense the character trace received at the input panel, the input panel and the evaluation device together forming a sensing device; using the handwriting recognition device to perform character recognition for the character trace sensed by the evaluation device, the handwriting recognition device ascertaining a plurality of different recognition results for the character trace; using a search device to perform a database search in the database, the database being at least one database selected from the group consisting of a navigation database, a music database and an address/telephone number database, the database search searching for at least one database entry that satisfies a match criterion for each of the plurality of different recognition results; displaying in a first area of the display device a hits list formed based on the plurality of different recognition results, the hits list being formed from the at least one database entry that satisfies the match criterion; and after performing character recognition, displaying in a second area of the display device the character trace sensed by the evaluation device simultaneously together with the hits list displayed in the first area of the display device, so that the user can identify an ambiguous input character for which the handwriting recognition device had difficulty and produced the plurality of different recognition results, wherein data of the character trace sensed by the evaluation device is transmitted to the display device by the evaluation device for displaying the character trace in the second area of the display device, the database search is started as soon as the user has lifted a drawing instrument from the input panel or as soon as the character trace has remained unchanged for a predetermined period of time, first and second character traces are received on the input panel, a display of the first character trace is removed and replaced with a display of the second character trace when, for the second character trace, the user has lifted the drawing instrument from the input panel or the second character trace has remained unchanged for the predetermined period of time, the evaluation device senses in succession a plurality of character traces received on the input panel as the user more precisely specifies an input string, character recognition is performed on each of the character traces after the character trace is sensed, to produce an additional recognition result, and after each additional recognition result, the database search is refined to more precisely search for a matching entry.