Patent ID: 6435937
Filing Date: 2002-08-20
Classification: A63B,A63H

Abstract:
A toy figure comprising:a body with a trunk, a head and extremities; a plurality of force sensors positioned in the body in positions to sense forces manually applied to the toy figure; a force measuring device inside the body and connected to said plurality of sensors, that receives forces applied to the sensors and measures the magnitude of forces; wherein said force measuring device includes a rotatable disk and a plurality of switches that close a circuit corresponding to the largest force applied to the plurality of force sensors; wherein each of the plurality of switches includes a pair of electrical contacts and a switch activator and each of the plurality of switches is radially spaced, relative to an axis of rotation of the rotatable disk, from the other switches; wherein the switch activator of each of the plurality of switches is mounted on the rotatable disk, slides over the pair of electrical contacts when carried past the pair of electrical contacts and a force exerted on said force measuring device is increasing and wherein the switch activator of each of the plurality of switches cams the pair of electrical contacts to a closed circuit position when carried past the pair of electrical contacts and the force exerted on said measuring device is decreasing; a data bus, connected to said force measuring device, for generating a data bus output that corresponds to the largest force applied to one or more of said plurality of sensors and measured by the force measuring device; a microcontroller, connected to the data bus, that receives the data bus output and generates a message group signal that corresponds to the data bus output; and an information storage device that stores a plurality of messages in each of a plurality of message groups and upon receipt of the message group signal from said microcontroller broadcasts an audio message from a selected message group that corresponds to the message group signal.