Source: http://www.google.com/patents?pg=PA12&dq=5,915,131&id=aSqbAQAAEBAJ&output=text
Timestamp: 2013-12-11 05:20:27
Document Index: 680715309

Matched Legal Cases: ['art 2', 'Application No. 200510103886', 'application No. 05786737', 'application No. 10', 'Application No. 2007', 'art, 30']

Patent US7932897 - Method of increasing the spatial resolution of touch sensitive devices - Google PatentsSearch Images Maps Play YouTube News Gmail Drive More »Advanced Patent Search | Page images | Sign inAdvanced Patent SearchPatentsDisclosed herein is a capacitive touch sensitive device. One aspect of the touch sensitive device described herein is a reduction in the number of sensor circuits needed for circular or linear capacitive touch sensitive devices while maintaining the same resolution and absolute position determination...http://www.google.com/patents/US7932897?utm_source=gb-gplus-sharePatent US7932897 - Method of increasing the spatial resolution of touch sensitive devicesMethod of increasing the spatial resolution of touch sensitive devices John Greer Elias et alOverviewAbstractDrawingsDescriptionClaims Patent number: 7932897Filing date: Aug 15, 2005Issue date: Apr 26, 2011Application number: 11/203,692 Page imagesPDF
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METHOD OF INCREASING THE SPATIAL RESOLUTION OF TOUCH SENSITIVE DEVICES CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED 5 APPLICATIONS This application is related to and claims priority to Provisional U.S. Patent Application Ser. No. 60/522,107, filedAug. 16,2004, having the same title and inventors as herein, which 10 provisional application is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.
The present invention relates generally to the field of touch sensitive devices, and, in particular, to the field of optimizing capacitive sensing electrode shape and arrangement to increase the effective spatial resolution and/or the physical range of the sensing device using a limited number of sensors. 20
In a capacitive touch sensitive device, each sensor, of which there may be many, comprises a conductive pad that forms one plate of a capacitor and a way to measure the capacitance of the conductive pad in conjunction with another movable conductive object. The movable conductive object is 25 typically a finger or stylus that is kept at a minimum distance from the conductive pad by a non-conductive spacer. The two conductive objects (conductive pad and movable conductive object), along with the non-conductive dielectric between them, form a capacitor. As known to those skilled in the art, 30 the capacitance of this capacitor changes as the distance and/ or overlap between the obj ects changes. In a typical device the number of conductive pads (henceforth called electrodes), the size of the electrodes, and the spacing between the electrodes determine the physical range and spatial resolution of the 35 touch sensitive device.
In typical implementations of capacitive touch sensitive devices the position of a finger gliding over a dielectriccovered array of sensor electrodes is determined by observing the change in capacitance as the finger moves on the surface. 40 Scanning and processing circuitry measures the change in capacitance due to the varying overlap between the finger and a given electrode. If a finger is large enough to partially overlap multiple neighboring electrodes then interpolation allows the finger position to be determined to a resolution 45 much higher than the electrode spacing. The interpolation calculation follows the classic centroid formula: the sum of the signal values at each electrode is multiplied by its coordinate and divided by the sum of all the signal values. This technique works equally well with linear arrays of row and 50 column electrodes, radial arrays of electrodes arranged as spokes in a wheel, or two-dimensional arrays of electrodes arranged to fill a planar space. Special electrode shapes intended to boost interpolation accuracy or resolution are the main distinction between the various related art designs. 55
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,463,388 to Boie et al., which is hereby incorporated by reference, teaches fingertip sized, interleaved electrode spirals to minimize the number of electrodes needed for a multi-touch sensor array. The interleaving ensures that a finger overlaps multiple electrodes even when 60 centered on a particular electrode and electrodes are one fingertip width apart. Stable interpolation generally requires continual finger overlap with multiple electrodes.
Seonkyoo Lee, "A Fast Multiple-Touch-Sensitive Input Device," Master's Thesis, University of Toronto (1984) 65 teaches virtual grouping of square electrode cells to more quickly determine whether an object is present within a
neighborhood. U.S. Pat. No. 5,767,457 to Gerpheide teaches locating an object by finding the balance point of a virtual grouping of electrodes on either side of the object. Both of these references are hereby incorporated by reference.
The touch sensitive device described herein allows each sensor circuit to share two or more electrodes by dispersing the shared electrodes in a particular pattern. The electrodes are shared in the sense that they both electrically connect to the same capacitive measuring sensor circuit through a common conductor without the need for multiplexing switches. Preferably, the distance separating a pair of shared electrodes, i.e., the dispersal distance, is one-third the number of electrodes in the device. The touch sensitive device employed herein further includes a particular coding pattern so that: 1) adj acent electrodes never share the same sensor circuit; and 2) the electrodes sharing the same sensor circuit are always separated from one another by the dispersal distance, i.e., roughly one third of the number of electrodes.
A touch sensitive device incorporating the teachings herein is illustrated in FIG. 1. The capacitive touch sensitive device 100 is a one-dimensional circular array, although other arrangements, e.g., linear arrays, etc., could also be used. The circular array includes 22 electrodes, numbered 0-21. The circular array includes only 11 sensor circuits. These sensor circuits may take the form of various sensor circuits known to
those skilled in the art. One such circuit is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,323,846, entitled "Method and Apparatus for Integrating Manual Input," which is hereby incorporated by reference. The sensor circuit corresponding to each electrode is designated by a number located at the outer portion of each 5 sensor electrode.
The touch sensitive device 100 thus shares two electrodes per sensor. However, additional electrodes may be shared with each sensor. Each electrode in FIG. 1 also includes a group designator, either "A" or "B". Each group A electrode 10 shares a sensor with a group "B" electrode. As noted above, the preferred dispersal distance (i.e., the distance between two electrodes sharing a sensor) is a span of approximately one-third the number of sensors, and thus approximately one-third of a characteristic dimension of the device. Thus for 15 the circular device illustrated in FIG. 1, the preferred dispersal distance is approximately one-third the circumference of the circle, thus encompassing approximately one third of the sensors. Any two adjacent electrodes and the two electrodes that share sensor circuits will thus be evenly spaced, a 20 third of the way around the circle. For example, electrode 1 in group A shares sensor 1 with electrode 8 in group B. Electrode 1 is located at approximately the eleven o'clock position, while electrode 8 is located at approximately the seven o'clock position. Similarly, electrode 0 in group A shares 25 sensor 0 with electrode 15 in group B. Electrode 0 is located at the twelve o'clock position, while electrode 15 is located at approximately the four o'clock position.
The sensor may alternatively be constructed as a one-dimensional linear array. For such a sensor, the dispersal pattern 30 is basically the same as for a circular array: linear arrays can be treated as a circular array that has been broken between two electrodes and uncurled. Again, it is preferred that the dispersal difference between two electrodes sharing a sensor be about one-third the characteristic dimension of the device, 35 which for a linear sensor is the length of the device.
Obviously, because multiple electrodes share a sensing circuit, the absolute position of an object in contact (proximity) with a single electrode cannot be determined. For absolute position interpolation to work properly in a device con- 40 structed according to the principles herein, each electrode must be sufficiently narrow enough that the object being tracked, usually a finger or conductive stylus, overlaps multiple (e.g., two or three) adjacent electrodes. Likewise, to eliminate any ambiguity, the object being tracked must be 45 smaller than the dispersal distance so that it does not overlap both shared electrodes of any sensor circuit.
While other electrode sharing patterns are possible, some of these can not be used to unambiguously determine the position of a finger. For example, an electrode arrangement 50 with a dispersal distance of half the array size would fail. For a circular array, this would correspond to sharing of electrodes on opposite sides of the circle, 180 degrees from one another. No matter how decoding and interpolation were done, the system could never tell whether the finger or stylus 55 was really at the opposite position halfway around the circle.
Because each sensor circuit is connected to multiple electrodes, the sensor illustrated herein requires a decoding method that finds the set of electrodes with the largest signals, then decides which of two possible electrode groups would 60 attribute these largest signals to adjacent rather than scattered electrodes. Once this best decoding is known, classic centroid interpolation can commence amongst the adj acent electrodes. For purposes of centroid computation, each sensor's entire signal is attributed to its electrode in the adjacent group, 65 leaving its other electrode from the dispersed group with zero signal and zero contribution to the centroid. Assuming the
signal to noise ratio of the sensor circuits is adequate, the sensor described herein offers the same position resolution as a conventional position detector that has a separate sensor circuit for each electrode.
next_A_electrode_sensor[NUM_SENSORS] = {1,2,3,4,5,6,7, 1,3,5,7};
previous_A_electrode_sensor[NUM_SENSORS] = {6,0,1,2,3,4,5, 6,1,3,5};
// Group B electrode and sensor mappings Sensor_to_B_type_electrode[NUM_SENSORS] = {15,8,17, 10,19,12,21,14,16,18,20};
next_B_electrode_sensor[NUM_SENSORS] = {8,8,9,9,10,10,0,0,2, 4,6};
previous_A_electrode_sensor[NUM_SENSORS] = {7,7,8,8,9,9,10, 10,0,2,4};
// Electrode to sensor mapping Electrode_to_Sensor[NUM_ELECTRODES] = {
1, //1
2, //2
3, //3
4, //4
5, //5
6, //6
7, //7 l,//8 8, //9
3, //10
9, //11 5,//12 10, //13
7, // 14 0,//15 8, // 16 2,1117 9,1118 4, // 19 10,//20 6//21 };