Foot operated position-based touchpad controller

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11567609-B1
Application number	US-202217837253-A
Country	US
Kind code	B1
Filing date	Jun 10, 2022
Priority date	Jun 10, 2022
Publication date	Jan 31, 2023
Grant date	Jan 31, 2023

Abstract

A controller apparatus includes a capacitive or resistive touch pad having a touch sensitive surface sized sufficient for operation by two human feet. One or more markers are coupled to the touch pad. The markers are configured for use by a computer system for room mapping.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A controller apparatus, comprising:
a capacitive or resistive touch pad having a touch sensitive surface sized sufficient for operation by two human feet;
one or more markers coupled to the capacitive or resistive touch pad wherein the markers are configured for use by a computer system for room mapping.

2. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the one or more markers configured for use by the computer system to determine a floor plane.

3. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the touch pad includes a mechanical edge to mark the boundary of the touch sensitive surface.

4. The apparatus of claim 3 wherein the mechanical edge includes a vibration element configured to vibrate when a touch nears the edge of the touch surface.

5. The apparatus of claim 3 wherein the mechanical edge includes a raisable edge of the touch surface, wherein the raisable edge is configured to be lowered to allow a foot gesture off the touch surface.

6. The apparatus of claim 3 wherein the mechanical edge includes an additional touch sensor wherein the additional touch sensor is used as an alternative input to the computer system.

7. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the touch surface of the touch pad is flat.

8. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the touch surface of the touch pad is curved.

9. The apparatus of claim 8 wherein touch surface is curved in one dimension.

10. The apparatus of claim 8 wherein touch surface is curved in two dimensions.

11. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the touch sensitive surface includes two or more movable touch sensitive arrays located proximal to each other.

12. The apparatus of claim 11 wherein the two or more movable touch sensitive arrays are each coupled to an actuator wherein the actuator is configured to move the touch sensitive arrays.

13. The apparatus of claim 11 wherein a distortion map is applied to inputs from the two or more movable touch sensitive array to account for the position of the two or more movable touch sensitive arrays.

Assignees

• Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc

Inventors

• Black Glenn
• Bean Celeste
• Bashkirov Sergey
• Taylor Michael

Classifications

• G06F3/045

  using resistive elements, e.g. a single continuous surface or two parallel surfaces put in contact · CPC title

• G06F3/044

  by capacitive means · CPC title

• G06F3/017

  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

• G06F2203/04104

  Multi-touch detection in digitiser, i.e. details about the simultaneous detection of a plurality of touching locations, e.g. multiple fingers or pen and finger · CPC title

• G06F3/04186 Primary

  Touch location disambiguation · CPC title