DETERMINING HANDEDNESS ON MULTI-ELEMENT CAPACITIVE DEVICES

摘要

A system and method is provided for identifying shadow regions on a multi-element capacitive input device such as a smart phone, and in particular using analysis of shadow regions, where the user may not be in direct contact with the device, to identify more accurately the area on the device the user is selecting, the hand, left or right, used to do the selecting and to identify the user using the device.

主权项

1. A computer-implemented method comprising:
receiving an indication of the placing a portion of a thumb on the surface of a capacitive input pad, the capacitive input pad having a plurality of sensing cells arranged near the surface in a closely-spaced physical configuration; receiving a capacitive value associated with each sensing cell of the plurality of sensing cells, the capacitive value having a defined relation to the proximity of the thumb to the sensing cell; comparing the capacitive value for the each sensing cell of the plurality of sensing cells to a first threshold value and to a second threshold value; storing the results of the comparison; identifying from the results of the comparison a
first set of the plurality of sensing cells, each sensing cell of the first plurality having a capacitive value greater than the first threshold value, asecond set of the plurality of sensing cells, each sensing cell of the second plurality having a capacitive value greater than the first threshold and less than a second threshold value, the second threshold value being greater than the first threshold value, and athird set of the plurality of sensing cells, each sensing cell of the third plurality having a capacitive value less than the first threshold; outputting an indication of the first set of the plurality of sensing cells, the second set of the plurality of sensing cells and the third set of the plurality of sensing cells.