Patent ID: 8193901

Claim:
A remote controller, comprising: an acquisition section which continuously acquires, by an image pickup element, an image comprising a device to be remotely controlled, and device-specific information optically transmitted from the device, the device-specific information comprising detailed information about control of the device and a header identifying a hierarchy of the detailed information; a display section which superimposes the image and the device-specific information which are continuously acquired by the acquisition section to display the superimposed image and the device-specific information; an instruction accepting section which accepts, from a user, instructions of selection of the device-specific information to a desired device to be remotely controlled from among devices whose device-specific information is acquired and selection of a desired control content with respect to the desired device whose device-specific information is selected; a remote control section which transmits a remote control signal corresponding to the desired control content selected at the instruction accepting section to the desired device whose device-specific information is selected at the instruction accepting section; and a remote control signal control section which converts the device-specific information optically transmitted from the device to digital data, said digital data comprising converted information of the detailed information about control of the device and the header identifying the hierarchy of the detailed information, wherein the display section determines whether there is the hierarchy of the detailed information about control of the desired device whose device-specific information is selected based on the header according to a selection of the device-specific information at the instruction accepting section, and displays the detailed information for each hierarchical layer in the hierarchy according to a determination result of whether there is the hierarchy of the detailed information about control of the desired device, wherein the instruction accepting section accepts, from the user, instructions of selection of the desired control content with respect to the device whose device-specific information is selected from among the detailed information displayed for said each hierarchical layer in the hierarchy, and wherein the remote control section transmits the remote control signal corresponding to the desired control content selected from among the detailed information displayed for said each hierarchical layer in the hierarchy to the device whose device-specific information is selected at the instruction accepting section.