Dynamic Morphing Touch Screen Interface (02-Feb-2010)
Today's touch sensitive interactive screens are becoming more pervasive in the portable electronic marketplace (phones, PDAs, etc). The limiting factor of the scaling of the screens is the actual physical limitations of the human finger or other pointing device. While the resolution of the screen may display large amounts of data in a scaled form such as a keypad, the ability of the human to select the keys is limited. Software (prior art) exists to allow selective zoom based upon a user selection of a icon on a screen. This enables a small screen to be used for navigation of content with a small screen essentially through hierarchy navigation. In this prior art, when the user selects the link, the content of the screen changes to that portion of the content. Other methods include displaying a magnified region of the area of interest, but this magnified area is placed on top of and occludes visability of other regions near the selection region. The current methods are essentially navigational tools that allow the end user to perform selection functionality on the device, but they are combersome to use. The disclosed method herein outlines a better accommodation to the physical limitations of the pointer while simultaneously allowing small form factor data viewing and selection. Specifically, a method of dynamically magnifying and morphing the display for selectable content based on the size of the pointing device, or the proximity of the pointing device.
Dynamic Morphing Touch Screen Interface
The issue that this disclosure deals with is the situation when the data must all remain on the same screen, e.g. the same hierarchical level of navigation on one screen. Some examples of this type of data would be a touch pad screen for a calculator, or an alphanumeric keyboard. In such applications, the user does not want the screen content to jump to a different hierarchical level, but desires the content to stay visible for the entire usage of the screen. It is also desirable to prevent occlusion of areas of the screen with a magnifier, such as used in prior art.
This disclosure proposals a local warping of the screen where, based upon the locality of a pointer, will magnify a responsive portion of the screen. Essentially, in a keyboard example, a sub portion of the keyboard will expand/magnify to sufficient scale while at the same time warping/compressing the surrounding content to remain visible on the screen. The user can select/pick an item in the magnified area of the screen, or move the pointer to another area of the screen causing that area to magnify.
In this manner, the end user can enter data or execute function matching the scale of the pointing device, and at the same time, rapidly move to the next portion or key of the screen.
1
This disclosure can be used for a reading mode as well, detecting pointer size or proximity,
with local warping/morphing to allow for reading of the magnified area.
2
The following hardware block diagram applies.
3
The following diagram depicts detection of pointing object size, and hardware associated with detection thereof.
4
The following software work flow exemplifies the detection and magnification for selectable items, such as a keyboard.
5
The following software work flow exemplifies the detection and magnification for viewable items, such as a document or web page for viewing.
6
Selection Mode
This disclosed selection method includes a novel combination of software and hardware image and touch sensitive system components, along with a method that implements a dynamic morphing algorithm that changes the degree of regional magnification based upon detected pointer object diameter and/or proximity, such that real time tracking of the pointer in proximity causes scaled magnification and morphing of the underlying region to a minimal amount necessary to allow the pointer object of detected diameter to select objects in the magnified region, while allowing visibility of the region or o...
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