Wearable terminal and display control method

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10120456-B2
Application number	US-201715412190-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jan 23, 2017
Priority date	Jan 29, 2016
Publication date	Nov 6, 2018
Grant date	Nov 6, 2018

Abstract

In a wearable terminal, a controller determines whether a direction of a display surface detected by a detector is within a first angle range. In a case where a latest direction of the display surface is out of the first angle range, the controller puts the display in a sleep state, but otherwise the controller puts the display in an active state. Furthermore, the controller specifies a second angle range from the second reference direction. The controller switches the display from the sleep state to the active state in a case the controller determines that the plurality of directions of the display surface detected in the first period and that the direction of the display surface newly detected by the detector is out of the second angle range. In the second display control, the display is switched from the sleep state to the active state even when the newly detected direction of the display surface is out of the first angle range.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A wearable terminal for being worn on a forearm of a user, comprising:
a display that displays information in an active state and that does not display the information in a sleep state;
a detector that detects a direction of a display surface of the display at different times; and
a controller that performs:
a first determination that determines whether the detected direction by the detector at a latest time is within a first angle range defined by a rotation angle of the display surface from a first reference direction about a rotation axis defined by each of at least two axes in a 3-dimensional space; and
a first display control (i) that puts the display in the sleep state in a case where a result of the first determination indicates that the detected direction by the detector at the latest time is out of the first angle range and (ii) that puts the display in the active state in a case where the result of the first determination indicates that the detected direction by the detector at the latest time is within the first angle range;
wherein the controller further performs:
a specification that specifies a second angle range which is defined by a rotation angle of the display surface from a second reference direction about a rotation axis defined by each of at least two axes in the 3-dimensional space and which is out of the first angle range, wherein the second reference direction is defined in a direction identified using at least one of directions of the display surface detected at the different times;
a second determination that determines whether the plurality of directions of the display surface detected in a first period with a first predetermined length till a present time remain in the determined second angle range;
a third determination that determines whether a direction of the display surface newly detected by the detector is out of the second angle range in a case where a result of the second determination indicates that the plurality of directions of the display surface detected in the first period remain in the second angle range; and
a second display control that switches the display from the sleep state to the active state in a case where a result of the third determination indicates that the direction of the display surface newly detected by the detector is out of the second angle range,
wherein, in the second display control, the display is switched from the sleep state to the active state even when the newly detected direction of the display surface is out of the first angle range.

2. The wearable terminal according to claim 1 , wherein
the at least one of the directions of the display surface includes a plurality of directions of the display surface each of which is detected at different times by the detector in a second period with a second predetermined length until the present time, and
wherein, in the specification, the controller defines the second reference direction by an average direction of the plurality of directions of the display surface detected by the detector in the second period, and specifies as the second angle range, an angle range using predetermined values indicating angles from the second reference direction.

3. The wearable terminal according to claim 1 , wherein
the at least one of the directions of the display surface includes a plurality of directions of the display surface each of which is detected at different times by the detector in a second period with a second predetermined length until the present time, and
wherein, in the specification, the controller performs a fourth determination that determines whether there is a periodic change in the plurality of directions of the display surface detected by the detector in the second period, and in a case where a result of the fourth determination indicates that there is the periodic change, the controller may specify the second angle range from the plurality of detected directions of the display surface such that the second angle range is defined by an angle range defined by a maximum value and a minimum value of the rotation angles of the display surface about each of the at least two axes.

4. The wearable terminal according to claim 1 , wherein the display is switched from the sleep state to the active state in the second control in a case where the result of the third determination indicates that the direction of the display surface newly detected by the detector has changed in a predetermined rotation direction about one of the two axes until the direction of the display surface is out of the second angle range.

5. The wearable terminal according to claim 4 , wherein the wearable terminal includes
a main part including the display, the detector, and the controller, and
a band whose two ends are respectively connected to two ends of the main part and which is wrapped together with the main part, in a ring form, around the forearm,
and wherein the at least two axes in the 3-dimensional space includes a first axis corresponding to a winding axis about which the band is wrapped, and a second axis corresponding to a rotation axis extending in a direction passing through the two ends, and
the predetermined rotation direction is one of rotation directions including a clockwise rotation direction about a rotation axis given by the first axis and a counterclockwise rotation direction about the rotation axis given by the first axis.

6. The wearable terminal according to claim 4 , further comprising a notificator,
wherein the third determination is a determination as to whether the newly detected direction of the display surface is deviated in a direction opposite to the predetermined rotation direction out of the second angle range, and
wherein the controller further controls the notificator to notify a user that the display is to be switched from the sleep state to the active state when the direction of the display surface detected next time has a change toward the predetermined rotation direction, in a case where the result of the third determination indicates that the newly detected direction of the display surface is deviated in a direction opposite to the predetermined rotation direction out of the second angle range.

7. The wearable terminal according to claim 1 , wherein the controller displays information on the display in a manner different for the first display control and the second display control.

8. The wearable terminal according to claim 7 , wherein the controller sets an image size or a font size to be larger in the second display control than in the first display control.

9. The wearable terminal according to claim 7 , wherein the controller sets the intensity of a back light of the display to be higher in the second display control than in the first display control.

10. The wearable terminal according to claim 5 , wherein the controller sets the contrast of information displayed on the display to be higher in the second display control than in the first display control.

11. The wearable terminal according to claim 7 ,
wherein, in the first display control, the controller switches the display from the active state to the sleep state when a first displaying period has elapsed since the controller switched the display from the sleep state to the active state in the first display control, and
wherein, in the second display control, the controller switches the display from the active state to the sleep state when a second displaying period longer than the first displaying period has elapsed since the controller switched the display from the sleep state to the active state in the second display control.

12. The wearable terminal ac

Assignees

• Panasonic Ip Corp America

Inventors

• Fuchikami Tetsuji
• Funase Kazuki
• Ozeki Akinori
• Aoki Hideshi

Classifications

• Y02D10/153

  Cross-Sectional Technologies · mapped topic

• G06F1/3265

  Power saving in display device · CPC title

• G06F1/1694

  the I/O peripheral being a single or a set of motion sensors for pointer control or gesture input obtained by sensing movements of the portable computer · CPC title

• G06F1/163

  Wearable computers, e.g. on a belt · CPC title

• G06F3/017 Primary

  Gesture based interaction, e.g. based on a set of recognized hand gestures (interaction based on gestures traced on a digitiser G06F3/04883) · CPC title