Patent ID: 7324672

Claim:
An input device which generates control information by moving an object to be detected, comprising: an image capture section which captures an image of the object to be detected; a feature point extraction section which extracts feature points of the image captured by the image capture section; a difference calculation section which calculates a difference between a distribution of positions of the feature points extracted from an image of the object to be detected in a frame at least one frame before a current frame and a distribution of positions of the feature points extracted from an image of the object to be detected in the current frame; and a control information output section which outputs the control information corresponding to the calculated difference, wherein the image capture section includes a detection surface and captures an image of an object to be detected which is in contact with the detection surface; and the control information output section detects an amount of movement of the object to be detected on the detection surface to obtain the control information.