System and method for packing multitouch gestures onto a hand
AssigneeApple Inc.
InventorsWayne Westerman, John Elias
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A multi-touch system is disclosed that compares finger arrangements at the beginning of multi-touch gestures and discriminates between neutral- and spread-hand performances. Gestures by the neutral- and spread-hand versions of each chord are then mapped to separate, but intuitively related cursor functions or sets of commands. Less-frequently performed functions and commands are typically assigned to the spread-hand chord, since spreading the hand from neutral takes deliberate effort. With these neutral and spread distinctions, a two-handed gesture set can be packed into a one-handed touch surface, or for two-handed touch surfaces, twice as many intuitively customizable gesture command sets can be accommodated.
Claims21
A method for interpreting gestures, the method comprising:
- classifying a combination of fingers that initially touch a touch sensitive surface as a particular chord;
- and
- testing whether a measured geometric arrangement of the fingers corresponds to a relaxed hand or deliberately spread fingers.
A computer readable medium, having stored therein one or more pairs of templates, wherein one template in each of the one or more pairs comprises coordinates of a particular chord performed by a relaxed hand and the other template in each of the one or more pairs comprises coordinates of the particular chord performed by deliberately spread fingers.
A method for interpreting gestures, the method comprising:
- classifying a combination of fingers that initially touch a touch sensitive surface as a particular chord;
- and
- testing whether a measured geometric arrangement of the fingers corresponds to a relaxed hand.
A method for interpreting gestures, the method comprising:
- classifying a combination of fingers that initially touch a touch sensitive surface as a particular chord;
- and
- testing whether a measured geometric arrangement of the fingers corresponds to deliberately spread fingers.
An apparatus for interpreting gestures, the apparatus comprising:
- a multi-touch surface;
- a neutral/spread hand classifier operatively coupled to the multi-touch surface and configured to determine whether a measured geometric arrangement of fingers touching the multi-touch surface corresponds to a relaxed hand or deliberately spread fingers;
- a command generation module operatively coupled to the neutral/spread hand classifier and configured to select a first set of gesture functions or commands if the measured geometric arrangement corresponds to a relaxed hand and further configured to select a second set of gesture functions or command if the measured geometric arrangement corresponds to deliberately spread fingers.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.