Patent ID: 8330744

Claim:
A method for locating a touch on a tactile surface of an object comprising: (a) a monitoring step during which a plurality of mechanical waves are caused to propagate to in the object from an emitter transducer on the object, to establish vibratory natural resonance frequencies in the object, and said plurality of mechanical waves are detected at a receiver transducer on the object, said receiving transducer generates a picked-up signal in response to the mechanical waves detected; and (b) a location step during which the touch on said tactile surface is located by analyzing the picked-up signal, wherein said plurality of mechanical waves comprise at least two frequency components corresponding to at least two vibratory natural resonance frequencies of the object, and wherein characteristics of the picked-up signal are compared with a library of reference characteristics, said reference characteristics corresponding respectively to a plurality of touches in predetermined zones of said tactile surface, wherein frequency components of the plurality of mechanical waves include a number, N, of frequency components corresponding to at least N vibratory natural predetermined frequencies of the object, and in which said characteristics of the picked-up signal correspond to the at least N vibratory natural predetermined frequencies, N being an integer greater than or equal to 2.