Advancements in mobile devices, especially progress in touch screen technologies of mobile devices, has led to a great number of new opportunities and problems. One opportunity is the ability to provide such devices in various sizes, including pocket sizes for smart phones and slightly larger sizes for tablet computers. Additionally, progress in touch screen technologies has led to seamless interaction with a plethora of applications. Despite such progress, there have been problems with the clumsiness of such touch screens, especially on smaller mobile devices, such as smart phones. It is common for a user’s finger to be too large for effective interaction with a touch screen of a smart phone, especially when icons of an application are too small or too close together. Furthermore, there are inadequacies in tactile feedback between a user and a touch screen, which especially affect users with audio and visual impairment, and there are limitations in communicating more than one type of signal between a user and a touch screen. For example, a user’s finger can only convey a single tactile signal, oppose to multiple signals simultaneously. Although, conventional styluses (e.g., passive styluses) have been used to relieve the issue of clumsiness, such styluses merely provide a narrower point of contact with a touch screen than a finger. Passive styluses do not provide feedback to a user, nor can they provide multiple signals of information simultaneously. For example, there is no right-click functionality on a passive stylus.
An active stylus or a method performed by an active stylus for interacting with a mobile device, wherein the mobile device has a sensor (e.g., a thermocouple junction), and wherein the stylus has a signal source (e.g., an analog heat source) that produces a signal (e.g., at least one analog temperature signal), wherein the at least one signal is configured to be detectable by the at least one sensor of the mobile device. The stylus also has at least one signal adjustment mechanism for changing the at least one signal and also has at least one transmitter (e.g., thermocouple junction) configured to transmit the at least one signal for receipt by the at least one sensor of the mobile device.
Patent Number : 9,063,591
Patent Title : Active styluses for interacting with a mobile device
Inventors : Alameh; Rachid M (Crystal Lake, IL), Krahenbuhl; John Henry (McHenry, IL), Merrell; Thomas Y (Beach Park, IL), Slaby; Jiri (Buffalo Grove, IL), Winkler; David P (Palatine, IL)
Assignee : Google Technology Holdings LLC (Mountain View, CA)
Family ID : 1000001172189
Appl. No. : 13/307,962
Filed : November 30, 2011
Abstract
An active stylus or a method performed by an active stylus for interacting with a mobile device, wherein the mobile device has at least one sensor (e.g., a thermocouple junction), and wherein the stylus has at least one signal source (e.g., an analog heat source) that produces at least one signal (e.g., at least one analog temperature signal), wherein the at least one signal is configured to be detectable by the at least one sensor of the mobile device. The stylus also has at least one signal adjustment mechanism for changing the at least one signal and also has at least one transmitter (e.g., thermocouple junction) configured to transmit the at least one signal for receipt by the at least one sensor of the mobile device.