Patent ID: 7785202

Claim:
A damage resistant hand-gripped manual controller for manipulating images or symbols on a display, comprising: a foam rubber exoskeleton including spaced-apart hand gripping sections and surrounding a hard plastic housing section, the housing section configured to hold an electronics assembly and positioned between the hand gripping sections, and the foam rubber exoskeleton at least in part formed as a multi-layered structure comprising an inside core layer and an outside surface layer, the inside core layer exhibiting higher density properties than those of the outside surface layer to provide differences in stability and tactility; and the electronics assembly operatively connected to control actuators and including electrical components that cooperate with the control actuators to produce signals for manipulating images or symbols on the display, and the control actuators including a mechanism that produces signals in response to motion of a hand of a user gripping the controller to cause corresponding multi-directional positioning of an image or a symbol on the display.