Optical user interface for controlling portable electric device
AssigneeNokia Corporation
InventorsKimmo Anters Keranen, Jukka-Tapani Makinen, Timo Kolehmainen
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Abstract
An optical user interface for controlling a portable electric device, such as a portable phone is provided. The user interface comprises a stripe-like optical contact surface, on which the finger of the user of the electric device is placed. A series of images of the fingerprint is taken and processed such that a motion vector or an image of the fingerprint is obtained. The invention provides a small-sized and economical user interface in terms of battery consumption and manufacturing costs.
Claims18
An optical user interface for controlling a portable electric device, the user interface comprising:
- optical contact means for forming at least a portion of a fingerprint when contacting the contact means with a finger;
- illuminating means for illuminating at least a portion of the optical contact means using primary optical radiation so that secondary optical radiation representing the portion of the fingerprint is generated;
- and
- detecting means for receiving at least a portion of the secondary optical radiation and converting the portion of the secondary optical radiation into an electric signal, the electric signal representing the portion of the fingerprint and being used for controlling the electric device, wherein the optical, contact means comprises a stripe-like optical contact surface, with which the finger is brought into contact for forming a slice of the fingerprint;
- wherein the illuminating means are arranged to confine the illumination to the stripe-like optical contact surface;
- and
- wherein the detecting means are arranged to confine the reception of the secondary optical radiation to the stripe-like optical contact surface and converting the secondary optical radiation into an electric signal, the electric signal representing the slice of the fingerprint.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.