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US 2004/0164963 A1Published application
Trackball device and vehicle incorporating the same
AssigneePanasonic Corporation
InventorsTakatoshi Ono, Takefumi Inoue
Life of this patent
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AssigneePanasonic Corporation
InventorsTakatoshi Ono, Takefumi Inoue
Estimating the term…
A trackball device including (i) a sphere, (ii) a support for rotatably supporting the sphere, (iii) a rotation detector for detecting rotation of the sphere, and (iv) a controller. The controller generates a specific output signal responsive to a signal from the rotation detector. The trackball device further includes an informer for generating auxiliary information that gives feedback of the situation to an operator according to how the sphere rotates. This structure can provide a trackball device having excellent user-friendliness. Because this trackball device gives feedback of the position of a pointer on a display to the operator, the operator doesn't have to look at the display. Thus, this trackball device is especially preferable to be incorporated into a vehicle.
A trackball device comprising:
An input device comprising:
A vehicle comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.