JPH04237324A - Touch panel device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To improve operability at the time of inputting information through a touch panel plate by detecting a touch area between the touch panel plate and a human's finger and finding out the centroid of the touching area. CONSTITUTION:A touching area detecting means 6 detects an area depressed by a human's finger on a glass plate 2 based upon a position detecting signal S1 outputted from a reflected wave detecting circuit 5. When the means 6 detects the touch area 12 between the human's finger and the glass plate 2 and the number of dots, a centroid position determining means 7 determines the centroid position of the touching area 12. Thereby a prescribed position based upon a centroid position or a centroid can be set up as an indicating point without setting up the whole touch area 12 as an indicating point, and at the time of inputting information by depressing the touch panel plate with a finger, a range narrower than the size of the finger can be designated.

Description

[Detailed description of the invention]

0001

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a touch panel device, and is particularly suitable for use in a touch panel device in which information is input by pointing in a narrow area with a finger.

0002

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, an input device called a touch panel device has been used as an input device for inputting information to an information processing device such as a computer. The touch panel device is configured to input information by pressing a touch panel board mounted on a display screen on which guidance information is displayed with a finger, touch pen, etc. according to the guidance displayed on the display screen. has been done.

FIG. 6 shows a schematic configuration of a conventionally used touch panel device using a sound wave detection method. As is clear from FIG. 6, the sound wave output devices 3 are arranged along two adjacent sides of the rectangular glass plate 2 stacked on the CRT display device 1. This sound wave output device 3 is
It is constructed by combining many acoustic prisms and piezoelectric transducers.

When operating the touch panel device configured as described above, the drive circuit 4 simultaneously operates the X-axis and Y-axis sound wave output devices 3, and the piezoelectric transducer group generates longitudinal waves. This longitudinal wave is then converted into a surface wave by the acoustic prism and radiated along the surface of the glass plate 2.

When a human finger touches the surface of the glass plate 2 while the surface waves are being radiated in this way, the surface waves radiated from the sound wave output device 3 are reflected on the finger, and the surface wave is The waves return to the same transducer from which they were emitted. This is reflected wave detection circuit 5
The position (area) pressed by the finger is detected based on the round trip time of the surface wave. When actually using the device, follow the guide display on the display screen 1 and press down on a designated position on the glass plate 2. The pressed position is detected as described above, and it is determined based on the detected position what information has been input.

[0006]

However, in the case of the touch panel device configured in this manner, there is a problem in that it is not possible to indicate with the finger a narrow range compared to the size of the finger, for example. For this reason, in order to indicate an area narrower than a human finger, a special pointing device such as a pen had to be used, which made the device configuration correspondingly larger and the information There was a problem that the operability during input became poor.

In view of the above-mentioned problems, the present invention enables a person to directly indicate a narrow range on a touch panel board with a human finger, and uses a special pointing tool such as a pen to indicate the narrow range. The purpose is to eliminate the need to use .

[0008]

[Means for Solving the Problems] A touch panel device of the present invention is a touch panel device in which information is input by pressing a touch panel plate with a human finger and detecting the pressed position. contact area detection means for detecting an area in contact with the finger of the person;
and barycenter position determination means for determining the center of gravity position of the area detected by the contact area detection means.

[0009]

[Operation] By determining the center of gravity of the contact area, it becomes possible to use the position of the center of gravity or a predetermined position based on the center of gravity as the instruction point, instead of using the entire contact area as the instruction point. When inputting information by pressing down on the touch panel board, it becomes possible to specify an area narrower than the size of the finger.

0010

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An embodiment of the present invention will be described in detail below with reference to FIGS. 1 to 4. FIG. 1 is a configuration diagram of a touch panel device showing one embodiment of the present invention. The touch panel device of this embodiment includes a CRT display device 1, a glass plate 2, a sound wave output device 3, a drive circuit 4, and a reflected wave detection circuit 5.
etc. The configuration of each of these parts is similar to that of the conventional touch panel device shown in FIG. 6, and detailed description thereof will be omitted.

The touch panel device of this embodiment is constructed by providing a touch area detecting means 6, a center of gravity position determining means 7, a pointing point determining means 8, a device controlling means 10, etc. in the touch panel device configured as described above. It is.

The contact area detection means 6 is provided to detect the area on the glass plate 2 that is being pressed by a human finger based on the position detection signal S1 derived from the reflected wave detection circuit 5. It is something that exists. In other words, (a) in FIG.
When a human finger 11 presses down on the glass plate 2 as shown in
As shown in FIG. 2(b), the human finger 11 and the glass plate 2 come into contact over a certain range 12. In addition, in FIG. 2, (a) shows the state in which the human finger 10 is pressing down on the glass plate 2, viewed from the side, and (b) shows the contact state seen from the bottom of the glass plate 2. ing.

An input detection matrix 13 for detecting the contact area 12 is set on the surface of the glass plate 2, as shown in FIG. The contact area 12 is detected by detecting the position pressed by the human finger 11 and the number of pressed dots according to the input detection matrix 13.

When the contact area detection means 6 detects the contact area and the number of contact dots between the human finger 11 and the glass plate 2, the gravity center position determination means 7 determines the gravity center position of the contact area 12. do. The above-mentioned center of gravity position may be determined based on calculation formulas (1) and (2) shown in a document containing the formulas, for example.

##EQU00001## The coordinates (x, y) in the X and Y directions determined by the above calculation formulas (1) and (2) become the position S of the center of gravity of the contact area 12.

The center of gravity S obtained in this way may be used as the pointing point of the human finger 11 as it is. However, if the center of gravity S is used as the pointing point, a problem arises in that the pointing point is hidden by the human finger 11 and becomes invisible. In order to eliminate such inconveniences, in this embodiment, a pointing point determining means 8 is provided, and a position separated from the fingertip by a predetermined distance and a predetermined direction is set as the pointing point P. This is realized, for example, by using the position of the center of gravity S as a reference point, and calculating the relative coordinates (difference dx, dy) with respect to the reference point by the indicated point determining means 8 based on a predefined calculation formula. .

FIG. 5 shows a flowchart showing the operation of the touch panel device of this embodiment described above. As shown in FIG. 5, when detection is started, the position coordinates of all dots pressed on the touch panel are detected in step ST1. Next, in step ST2, the average position coordinates (x, y) of the pressed dots are calculated, and this is set as the center of gravity S. Then, in step ST3, the position coordinates (x, y) of the center of gravity S and the preset difference (
By calculating the position coordinates of the pointing point P from dx, dy), it is possible to point to a position slightly distant from the fingertip.

[0017]

[Effects of the Invention] As described above, the present invention detects the contact area between the touch panel board and the human finger and determines the center of gravity of the contact area, so that the entire contact area is used as the pointing point. Instead, the center of gravity position can be used as the pointing point, or a predetermined position based on the center of gravity can be used as the pointing point. As a result, when inputting information by pressing down on the touch panel board with a human finger, it is now possible to use the finger to indicate an area narrower than the size of the human finger, and input information via the touch panel board. The operability when doing so can be greatly improved.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a configuration diagram of a touch panel device showing an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing a state in which a touch panel board is pressed with a human finger.

FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating a contact area when a touch panel board is pressed.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing the positional relationship between the center of gravity and a designated point.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart for explaining the operation of the embodiment.

FIG. 6 is a configuration diagram showing an example of a conventional touch panel device.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 CRT display device 2 Glass plate 3. Sound wave output device 4 Drive circuit 5 Reflected wave detection circuit 6 Contact area detection means 7 Center of gravity position determination means 11 Human fingers S Center of gravity P Indication point

Claims (1)

[Claims] [Claim 1] Pressing a touch panel board with a human finger,
In a touch panel device configured to input information by detecting the pressed position, the touch panel device includes a contact area detecting means for detecting an area where the touch panel board and a human finger are in contact; A touch panel device comprising: centroid position determining means for determining the centroid position of a detected area.