Movement capability for buttonless touchpads and forcepads
AssigneeCirque Corporation
InventorsPaul Glad, Jared Bytheway, Jon Bertrand
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A system that provides mechanical movement of a surface of a touch sensor when force is applied, may include a substrate; a touch sensor formed on a substrate; a flex arm coupled to the substrate forming a flexible joint between the substrate and the flex arm; a housing for the touch sensor, the housing supporting the touch sensor at a distal end of the flex arm; and a force sensor integrated into the flex arm.
Claims20
A system that provides mechanical movement of a surface of a touch sensor when force is applied, comprising:
- a substrate;
- a touch sensor formed directly on a same surface of the substrate, the touch sensor being a capacitive sensitive touch area defined by multiple electrodes on the substrate;
- a flex arm coupled to the same surface of the substrate forming a flexible joint between the substrate and the flex arm;
- a housing for the touch sensor, the housing supporting the touch sensor at a distal end of the flex arm;
- and
- a force sensor integrated into the flex arm.
A system that provides mechanical movement of an entire surface of a touch sensor when force is applied, said system comprising:
- a substrate for a touch sensor, the touch sensor being a capacitive sensitive touch area defined by multiple electrodes formed directly on a same rectangular surface of the substrate;
- four flex arms wherein each one of the four flex arms is coupled to a different corner of the same rectangular surface of the substrate having the capacitive sensitive touch area and flexing at a joint between the substrate and the four flex arms;
- a housing for the touch sensor, the housing supporting the touch sensor at a distal end of each of the four flex arms;
- a touch sensor disposed on the surface of the substrate;
- and
- a force sensor integrated into the flex arm;
- wherein the touch sensor is a buttonless touch sensor having no mechanical buttons for performing mouse click functions, and
- wherein applying a force against the rectangular surface of the touch sensor causes the top surface of the touch sensor to move within the housing to provide haptic feedback to the user while the substrate is flexing at the joint of each of the four flex arms, to thereby provide movement to the buttonless touch sensor.
A computer-program product for using a touch sensor, the computer-program product comprising a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions executable by a processor to:
- detect a change in a measurement value from a force sensor integrated into a flex arm attached to a same surface of a substrate, where a touch sensor is formed directly on the same surface of substrate;
- the touch sensor being a capacitive sensitive touch area defined by multiple electrodes on the substrate;
- and
- determine that the detected change is an input, independent of inputs through the touch sensor, based at least in part on the strength of the detected change;
- wherein the flex arm is formed on the same surface of the substrate on which the capacitive sensitive touch area defined by multiple electrodes is formed.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.