Patent ID: 8416217

Claim:
A light-based finger gesture user interface for an electronic device comprising: a housing for an electronic device comprising inner sidewalls extending from a bottom opening to a top opening to form a cavity; a touch screen display mounted in said housing such that the whole cavity is disposed along a side of the display, separate from the display; a detector mounted in said inner sidewalls, comprising a plurality of light emitters that project light beams into the cavity and a plurality of light receivers that measure intensities of blocked and unblocked ones of the projected light beams; and a processor connected to said detector and to said display for generating touch position data in response to a first object touching said display based on output received from said display, for generating cavity insertion data in response to a second object, different than the first object, being inside the cavity based on output received from said detector, and for combining the touch position data and the cavity insertion data into input for the electronic device, wherein the cavity insertion data includes location and orientation of the second object inside the cavity.