Patent ID: 7898530

Claim:
A steering wheel or steering wheel element, composed of an input face having a plurality of touch-sensitive input face zones positioned on the front facing surface of the steering wheel confronting the driver and on the rear facing surface of the steering wheel opposite the front facing surface, and a control unit which is coupled thereto, characterized in that the gripping of the steering wheel by the driver during use results in the touching of the input face on the front facing and rear facing surfaces of the steering wheel by areas of the hand, in particular by the balls of the hand, and by fingers is recognized as being by areas of the hand and fingers and used to calculate the identity of the individual fingers and thus to calculate a temporarily valid basic topography for the areas of the hand and for the fingers with respect to the input face zones, by means of which topography an assignment topography is calculated to thereby assign a respective alphanumeric character or a control function to the input face zones enabling the driver to control various vehicle functions by selectively pressing on said input face zones.