OPTICAL PROXIMITY SENSOR AND ASSOCIATED USER INTERFACE

摘要

A proximity sensor including a housing, light emitters mounted in the housing for projecting light out of the housing along a detection plane, light detectors mounted in the housing for detecting amounts of light entering the housing along the detection plane, whereby for each emitter-detector pair (E, D), when an object is located at a target position p(E, D) in the detection plane, corresponding to the pair (E, D), then the light emitted by emitter E is scattered by the object and is expected to be maximally detected by detector D, and a processor to synchronously activate emitter-detector pairs, to read the detected amounts of light from the detectors, and to calculate a location of the object in the detection plane from the detected amounts of light, in accordance with a detection-location relationship that relates detections from emitter-detector pairs to object locations between neighboring target positions in the detection plane.

主权项

1. A proximity sensor for identifying a proximal object, comprising:
a housing; a plurality of light emitters mounted in said housing for projecting light out of said housing; a plurality of light detectors mounted in said housing, operable when activated to detect amounts of light arriving at the detectors; a plurality of lenses mounted in said housing, each lens, denoted L, being positioned in relation to two respective ones of said detectors, denoted D1 and D2, such that light entering lens L is maximally detected at detector al when the light enters lens L at an acute angle of incidence θ1, and light entering lens L is maximally detected at detector D2 when the light enters lens L at an obtuse angle of incidence θ2; and a processor connected to said emitters and to said detectors, operable to synchronously activate emitter-detector pairs, and configured to calculate a partial contour of an object outside said housing that reflects light, projected by the activated emitters, back towards said lenses, based on amounts of light detected by the activated detectors.