Computer graphics processing and selective visual display system – Display peripheral interface input device – Touch panel
Reexamination Certificate
1999-07-09
2002-01-01
Wu, Xiao (Department: 2674)
Computer graphics processing and selective visual display system
Display peripheral interface input device
Touch panel
C345S173000, C345S178000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06335724
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a method and device for inputting a coordinate position. A touch-panel surface is formed by irradiating light on the surface of a white board or a display unit which light is substantially parallel to the surface and a position on the surface of the white board or the display unit is inputted by detecting a position on the surface where the light forming the touch-panel surface is blocked. More particularly the invention relates to a device for inputting coordinate position in which can be detachably attached to the writing surface of a white board or display surface of a display unit. The present invention also relates to a display board system which uses the coordinate-position input device for inputting a manually specified position as the coordinate position.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
When a white board (or a blackboard) is used in a meeting or delivering a lecture in a school or a college or the like, in order to record the contents written on the white board it has been general to copy the contents into a notebook by hand or to input the contents in some memory using a word processor or the like. In recent years, in association with the widespread use of digital cameras or the like, there has also been employed a method of recording the contents written on a white board by photographing the contents.
A display board device with a scanner and a printer provided to a white board is becoming popular. In such a device, contents written on the white board are scanned and read, and the read contents can directly be printed (recorded) onto a paper with the help of the printer.
Further, there has been also proposed a display board system having a large display unit such as a plasma display, a coordinate-positlon input device and a control unit for controlling these components. The coordinate-position input device forms a touch-panel surface on the display surface of the display unit. Information (coordinate position) is input into the coordinate-position input device instead of directly writing on the white board. The information input into the coordinate-position input device is displayed onto the display surface of the display unit and the information can be stored in a storing device such as a memory as well.
As a method of detecting a coordinate position by the coordinate-position input device provided in this type of electronic blackboard device, there is a method of irradiating light onto the entire surface provided in a coordinate position input area and detecting a position of a pen on this surface by detecting the reflected light. Such a method is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. HEI 9-91094. Disclosed in this Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. HEI 9-91094 is a device which scans light so as to irradiate the light onto the entire surface by driving a light source with the help of a driving unit.
There is now a device having a further simplified structure in which the driving unit from the device described above is eliminated. In such a device, the light emitted from a light source is spread in a fan shape with the help of a lens or the like so that the ight is spread over the entire area of the writing surface.
FIG. 23
explains the principles of this type of method in a simple manner. The device shown in the figure has a panel
80
as a writing surface. Reflecting members
2
are provided on three sides of the panel
80
. A light source R is provided at a corner in the lower right side thereof in the figure, and a light source L is provided at a comer in the lower left side thereof. It should be noted that a point P(x
p
, y
p
) on the panel
80
shows a position of a tip of a pen thereon.
In the structure shown in the figure, light beams emitted from the light source R and the light source L are spread by lenses (not shown herein) located in the front section of the light sources R and L respectively, and each of the spread light becomes a flux of light (a fan-shaped light flux) having a fan shape with a central angle of 90 degrees respectively. The fan-shaped light flux is reflected by the reflecting members
2
provided on the three sides of the panel
80
, the reflecting members
2
are so designed that the fan-shaped light flux is reflected therefrom along the optical path which is same as at the time of its emission. Therefore, the reflected fan-shaped light fluxes travel in the direction of the light sources r and L along the same optical path as at the time of their emission. Further, for instance, each of the light fluxes is directed towards a light receiving section (not shown herein) by a mirror (not shown herein) provided on the optical path and detected therein.
With such a structure as described above, when the tip of a pen is present at the position of the point P on the panel
80
, some light passing through the point P of the fan-shaped light flux is reflected by the pen tip and can not reach the reflecting members
2
(this state is described in the following specification as a state in which the light is blocked by a pen tip). Because of that, only the reflected light of the light passing through the point P of the fan-shaped light flux can not resultantly be detected by the light receiving section. At this point, if a CCD line sensor is used as a light receiving section, for instance, the optical axis of the light not having been received can be identified from the entire reflected light.
It is known that the optical axis of the reflected light is identical to that of the emitted light and that the point P is present on the optical axis of the light which has not been detected, so that the angle of emission of the light passing through the point P can be computed from the optical axis of the reflected light which has not been detected. Accordingly, emission angles &thgr;
L
and &thgr;
R
are obtained from the results of light reception by the two light receiving sections, and optical axis a
L
and optical axis a
R
can be obtained from these two emission angles respectively. Further, the coordinates (x
p
, y
p
) of the point P can be computed as a point of intersection of those optical axis a
L
and optical axis a
R
.
More specifically, the coordinates (x
p
, y
p
) of the point P are obtained as described below. Namely,
x
p
=(W·tan &thgr;
R
)/(tan &thgr;
L
+tan &thgr;
R
) (1)
y
p
=(tan &thgr;
L
·W·tan &thgr;
R
)/(tan &thgr;
L
+tan &thgr;
R
)=x
p
·tan &thgr;
L
(2)
Where W is a distance between the centers of the light source R and light source L.
With the method described above, the coordinate-position input device described above can automatically record the contents written on the panel
80
by reading the locus of a pen tip by means of successively reading the coordinate positions of the pen tip moving along the panel
80
.
In the conventional technology, however, there are problems as described below when contents written on a white board is recorded.
In order to record the contents written on a white board, it is required to copy the contents into a notebook by hand or to input the contents with the help of a word processor or the like, so that work by hand is essential in both of the cases. The copying work (copying the contents into a notebook) or the inputting work (inputting the contents into a word processor) is troublesome, inconvenient and therefore disadvantageous.
Secondly, when contents written on a white board are recorded by photographing it with a digital camera or the like, the contents have to be photographed at a location some distance from the board so that the entire white board can be viewed through the viewfinder of the camera. When a photograph is taken from a distance, information written on the white board with the small characters is hard to be interpreted from such a photograph.
On the other hand, the conventional display board device or the conventional display board system has problems as described below.
Although the information on a white board can easily be recorded by scannin
Ito Takahiro
Ogasawara Tsutomu
Takekawa Kenichi
Oblon & Spivak, McClelland, Maier & Neustadt P.C.
Ricoh & Company, Ltd.
Wu Xiao
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