JPH09237160A - Information input device with touch panel - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To realize the long life, minituarization and lightweight of a touch panel by protecting the peripheral part of the touch panel with small strength in an information input device with the touch panel. SOLUTION: A first, the output voltages of the touch panel in an X direction and a Y direction are read (step S11) at the time of touching and converted (S12) into a coordinate. Moreover, it is discriminated to which of sections of a touch panel input surface in a prescribed and defined X and Y directions the detected coordinate X and Y obtained by the conversion belong respectively, to judge (S13) in which of prescribed and defined respective areas the detected coordinate exists and the correction value of the coordinate in the area is obtained (S14). When the detected coordinate is within the area of the peripheral part of the touch panel, correction is executed (S15) so as to deviated the detected coordinate towards the outside of the input surface of the touch panel and a cursor is displayed (S16) at a position corresponding to the coordinate which is set by adding the correction in the display surface of a display device.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an information input device with a touch panel, which has a touch panel, detects the coordinates of a touched position on the input surface of the touch panel, and inputs information according to the coordinates. .

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, there is an information input device using a touch panel. This is because a transparent touch panel is placed on the surface of the display unit, and when the pattern of the item or button displayed on the display unit is touched with a finger or pen through the touch panel, the coordinates of the touched position are detected. By programming to execute the function of the item or button on the display unit corresponding to the coordinates, even a user who is unfamiliar with the device can intuitively execute the desired function. There is.

In such a device, electrical or software correction is applied so that the coordinates obtained from the touch panel overlaid on the display match the display coordinates on the display. Also, since there is a slight gap between the display and the touch panel, there is no problem when the display is viewed from the front, but when the display is viewed obliquely, the gaps in the coordinates cause a gap. A process for correcting the deviation is also performed.

[0004]

By the way, since the touch panel has a structure in which two transparent conductive thin plates (made of glass or plastic) are superposed at narrow intervals, it is difficult to increase the strength. . In particular, the stress applied to the peripheral portion of the touch panel when touched is larger than that to the central portion. Further, although the coordinates of the touched position on the touch panel are output as a voltage value, this voltage often changes non-linearly in the peripheral portion, and it may be difficult to determine the coordinates with high accuracy.

Therefore, in order to avoid touching the peripheral portion of the input surface of the touch panel as much as possible, a physical margin is provided in advance by covering the peripheral portion with the casing of the device, or displayed under the touch panel. I was designing the application so that items and buttons were not placed in the surrounding area.

However, providing a physical margin increases the entire area of the touch panel and makes the device heavy, so that it is not an appropriate solution for portable devices.
In addition, whether or not to dispose items and buttons in the peripheral portion has much to do with the sense and knowledge of the application designer, and unfortunately, in some applications, the peripheral portion is tightly arranged.

Therefore, an object of the present invention is to reduce the number of times the peripheral portion is touched in the information input device with a touch panel of this type by consciously instructing the user not to touch the peripheral portion of the input surface of the touch panel. As a result, it is possible to realize a long-life, small size, and light weight touch panel.

[0008]

In order to solve the above problems, according to the present invention, a touch panel is provided, the coordinates of the touched position on the input surface of the touch panel are detected, and information corresponding to the coordinates is displayed. In an information input device with a touch panel for inputting, a determination means for determining whether or not the detected coordinates of the touched position are in a predetermined peripheral region of the input surface of the touch panel, and the determination means When the detected coordinates are determined to be in the area of the peripheral portion, a configuration is provided in which a correction unit is provided to correct the detected coordinates toward the outside of the input surface of the touch panel.

With such a configuration, when the user touches the defined peripheral area of the input surface of the touch panel, the detected coordinates of the touched position are shifted toward the outside of the input surface of the touch panel. Will be corrected,
When the user knows this, when he / she tries to touch the peripheral part next time, he / she touches the position inward from the originally intended touch position.

In particular, if a display device is provided and a cursor is displayed on the display surface of the display device at a position corresponding to the coordinates set by the correction by the correction means,
When the peripheral area is touched, the correction causes the cursor to be displayed at a position shifted outward from the display position corresponding to the touch position, so that the user can see the deviation between the touch position and the cursor display position at a glance. You will be able to touch the next time while being aware of the inward position.

In this way, the user can consciously avoid touching the peripheral portion of the touch panel, and the number of times the peripheral portion is touched can be reduced.

[0012]

BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of an embodiment of an information input device with a touch panel according to the present invention.

In the structure shown in FIG. 1, the transparent touch panel 1 is arranged in close contact with a display surface of an LCD (liquid crystal display device) 10 to be described later, and when the input surface (upper surface) is touched with a finger or a pen. , The X direction of the touched position on the input surface,
Two pieces of coordinate information in the Y direction are output with two voltage values. A cursor is displayed at a position on the display surface of the LCD 10 corresponding to the touch position on the touch panel 1.

The coordinate detector 2 includes an A / D converter and a C described later.
It is realized by the program executed by PU4. The coordinate detection unit 2 A / D-converts the voltage value from the touch panel 1, and then uses a voltage-coordinate conversion table and correction data that are provided in advance by a processing program stored in the ROM 5 described later to coordinate the touch position LCD10 corresponding to
Convert to coordinate values that match the above coordinates. Note that this conversion method is the same as that used in a touch panel that has already been put into practical use, and therefore a description thereof will be omitted.

The detected coordinates output from the coordinate detection unit 2 are input to the peripheral portion determination unit 3 and the CPU 4. The peripheral portion determination unit 3 is realized by a program executed by the CPU 4 together with an offset unit 8 and a coordinate setting unit 9 described later. The peripheral portion determination unit 3 determines whether the detected coordinates input from the coordinate detection unit 2 are in a peripheral portion area defined as described later on the input surface of the touch panel 1 or in an area inside thereof. . The specific content will be described later with reference to FIG.

The CPU 4 uses the work area in the RAM 6 to perform the processing described below according to the processing program and the conversion table stored in the ROM 5, and various external devices via the I / O (input / output) interface 7. Control and operate. An area for storing the input information is also provided in the RAM 6.

The offset unit 8 determines the coordinates of the position of the cursor displayed on the LCD 10 when it is determined that the detected coordinates are in the peripheral region of the input surface of the touch panel 1 according to the information from the peripheral portion determination unit 3. A correction value for correction is obtained as described later.

The coordinate setting unit 9 sets the coordinates of the position of the cursor displayed on the LCD 10, sets the basic coordinates corresponding to the detected coordinates in accordance with an instruction from the CPU 4, and further provides them from the offset unit 8. Correction is made by the correction value and the coordinates of the cursor position are set.

The LCD 10 displays a cursor at the position of the coordinates set by the coordinate setting section 9. Further, naturally, characters and figures are displayed as in a general LCD.

Next, FIG. 2 shows a cross section of the touch panel 1 and an input surface on the upper surface. As shown here,
As the structure of the touch panel 1, a thin transparent plastic 20 that has been subjected to a conductive treatment and a glass 22 are arranged to face each other with a spacer 21 sandwiched therebetween at a narrow interval. A portion of the upper surface of the touch panel 1 other than the portion directly above the spacer 21 is an input surface 1a capable of touch input.

Here, for example, when the point B shown in the upper part of FIG. 2 is pressed (touched), the plastic 20 bends,
The point B contacts the glass 22, and part of the current flowing on the surface of the glass 22 flows to the plastic 20.
Since the voltage of the flowing current is obtained by dividing the voltage applied to the glass 22 according to the position of the contact portion, it is possible to determine which portion of the glass 22 is in contact from the magnitude of this value. By performing this twice in the X direction and the Y direction, the coordinates of the position where the touch panel 1 is pressed can be specified.

When the position where the touch panel 1 is pressed is the point B on the inner side, the touch panel 1 is wholly deflected, so that the stress applied to the touch panel 1 is not a problem. However, when the point A in the peripheral portion is pressed, the point A is near the spacer 21, so that stress concentration occurs near the spacer 21 and it is difficult to maintain the strength of the touch panel 1. The peripheral portion shown by the diagonal lines in the top view of the lower portion of FIG. 2 is a weak portion in terms of strength.

Conventionally, the diagonally shaded portion including the point A is covered with a housing so that the user cannot touch it, or even if the diagonally shaded portion is touched, the diagonally shaded portion of the peripheral portion cannot be physically touched. The thickness of the plastic 20 was increased to the extent that there was no problem in strength.

On the other hand, in the present invention, the user is consciously avoiding touching the shaded portion so as to avoid it. Therefore, in the present invention, the peripheral area including the shaded area in FIG. 2 and a part slightly inside thereof on the input surface 1a of the touch panel 1 is defined in advance, and when the peripheral area is touched, The detected coordinates of the touched position are corrected so as to be shifted toward the outside of the input surface 1a of the touch panel 1, and the cursor is displayed at the position on the display surface of the LCD 10 corresponding to the coordinates set by the correction. The details will be described below.

FIG. 3 shows how to define the area of the peripheral portion of the touch panel 1 for correcting the detected coordinates. That is, the input surface 1a of the touch panel 1 is divided into three sections of predetermined distances X0, X1, and X2 in the X direction and Y0, Y1, and Y of the predetermined distance in the Y direction.
It is divided into 3 sections of 2 and the whole area is [X0 / Y0] ~
It is divided into 9 areas indicated by [X2 / Y2] (hereinafter, referred to as 9
The entire area is indicated by [Xn / Yn]). For example, the vicinity of the upper left corner of the shaded portion in FIG. 2 can be expressed as being included in the area indicated by [X0 / Y0]. And [X1 /
Y1] and the portion of 8 regions other than the inner region (see FIG. 2).
Peripheral part including the shaded area and the area slightly inside)
Is defined as a peripheral portion for correcting the detected coordinates. Note that, in FIG. 3, the X coordinate and the Y coordinate when correction is performed.
The plus direction of the coordinate correction value is shown by an arrow.

Next, FIG. 4 shows [Xn / Yn] as described above.
The table shows how to set the coordinate correction amounts α and β in the X direction and the Y direction in each of the nine regions divided by the format.
For example, for the area [X0 / Y0] near the upper left corner in FIG. 3, it is shown that α and β are corrected in the minus direction (leftward and upward) in both the X and Y directions. ,
For the inner region [X1 / Y1], it is shown that the correction value is zero in both the X and Y directions and no correction is applied. The correction is performed in all of the eight areas in the peripheral portion, and the direction of the correction is the direction toward the outside of the touch panel 1 in each area.

Next, FIG. 5 is a flow chart showing an algorithm of coordinate input processing including the above-described correction processing performed when input is made by touching the touch panel. Specifically, this processing is performed by the CPU 4 of FIG. 1 according to a program stored in the ROM 5.

When the touch panel 1 is touched, first, in step S11 of FIG. 5, the output voltages in the X and Y directions of the touch panel 1 are measured and read by the A / D converter, and the X and Y directions obtained in step S12 are measured. The directional voltage value is converted into the X-direction and Y-direction coordinates on the input surface 1a of the touch panel 1 by using the conversion table stored in the ROM 5. That is, steps S11 and S12 realize the coordinate detection unit 2 of FIG.

Next, in step S13, the X and Y values of the detected coordinates obtained by the above conversion are the X and Y values shown in FIG.
Three divisions of 0, X1, X2, Y0, Y1, Y in Y direction
It is determined which of the three divisions 2 is included and which of the nine areas of the above-mentioned [Xn / Yn] format the detected coordinates are in. This judgment includes a judgment as to whether the detected coordinate is in any of the eight regions of the peripheral portion other than the inner [X1, Y1]. That is, this step S13 realizes the peripheral portion determination unit 3 described above.

Next, step S14 is for realizing the above-mentioned offset unit 8, and here, from the correction table corresponding to the table of FIG.
Processing for obtaining a correction value corresponding to the area of the detected coordinates obtained by the determination of 3 is performed.

Next, step S15 realizes the coordinate setting unit 9 described above. Here, the correction value obtained in step S14 is added to the detected coordinate value, and the resultant coordinate is displayed at the cursor display position. The process of setting as the coordinates of is performed. Here, only when the detected coordinates are in the peripheral area,
Of course, the correction values are added and the correction is performed.

Finally, in step S16, the cursor is displayed on the display surface of the LCD 10 at the position corresponding to the coordinates set in step S14, and the process is terminated.

Next, how the cursor is displayed according to the touch input as a result of executing the above processing will be described with reference to FIGS.

FIG. 6 shows an execution result of the above processing when the area [X1 / Y1] inside the input surface 1a of the touch panel 1 is touched with the pen 11. In this case, the correction value obtained in step S14 is based on the table in FIG.
Both directions are 0 and no correction is performed. As a result, the coordinates of the display position of the cursor with respect to the coordinates of the touched position become exactly the same value, and as a result, the cursor touches the point touched by the pen tip of the pen 11 on the display surface of the LCD 10 under the touch panel 1 as shown in the figure. 12 is displayed.

On the other hand, FIG. 7 shows a region [X
0 / Y0] is a result of processing when touched. In this figure, in the information input device with a touch panel according to the present embodiment, an example in which the [Print] button displayed on the LCD 10 below the area [X0 / Y0] of the touch panel 1 is touched to execute the printing operation Shows.
When the user touches [Print] to execute printing, the center of the area [X0 / Y0] is moved to the pen 1 as shown in the figure.
Suppose you touched in 1. Since the correction value obtained in the process of step S14 at this time is the region [X0 / Y0],
As shown in the table, X direction is -α and Y direction is -β.
It is. As a result, the correction in step S15 is performed to shift the detected coordinates toward the outside in the upper left direction, and the cursor 12 actually displayed is slightly displaced to the outside on the upper left of the touch position of the pen tip of the pen 11. Is displayed in the

Therefore, at first glance, the user knows that there is a slight deviation between the touch position of the pen tip and the cursor display position, and from now on, in order to correct this deviation, rather than [print] on the LCD 10, You will be touching while being aware of the inner point at the bottom right.

FIG. 8 shows the relationship between the touch position of the pen 11 and the cursor display position when the user intentionally touches the inside in this way. As in FIG. 7, X
By adding the correction in the minus direction in both the direction and the Y direction, the cursor 12 that is actually displayed is displayed at a position slightly shifted to the outside on the upper left of the touch position of the pen tip, and as a result, [print ] The cursor 12 is displayed at the position.

In this way, by slightly shifting the cursor display position outward from the touch position of the pen tip, the user does not intentionally touch the peripheral portion of the touch panel, especially the shaded portion in FIG. It is possible to send it.

In the above embodiment, the definition of the peripheral area for correcting the detected coordinates of the touch panel shown in FIG. 3 is merely an example, and X for defining the area is defined.
It is needless to say that the number of sections in the direction and the Y direction and the size of each area may be different from those in FIG.

Further, although the touch panel 1 and the LCD 10 are arranged so as to overlap with each other in the configuration of the above-described embodiment, even if the configuration is such that the touch panel 1 and the LCD 10 are separately arranged or a display device is not used, the detection coordinates of the peripheral portion can be corrected. Of course, the technique of the present invention can be applied.

[0042]

As is apparent from the above description, according to the information input device with a touch panel of the present invention, the detected coordinates of the touched position are in the predetermined peripheral region of the input surface of the touch panel. In this case, since the detected coordinates are corrected so as to be shifted toward the outside of the input surface of the touch panel, the user is consciously not touching the peripheral portion of the touch panel to reduce the number of touches on the peripheral portion, It is possible to extend the life of the touch panel. Further, since it is not necessary to increase the thickness or the outer shape of the touch panel in order to increase the strength, the device can be downsized and lightened. Furthermore, it is possible to use the touch panel without using the peripheral portion where it is difficult to determine the coordinates, and it is possible to obtain an excellent effect such as erroneous input can be avoided.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration of an embodiment of an information input device with a touch panel according to the present invention.

2A and 2B are a cross-sectional view and a top view showing the structure of the touch panel of the same embodiment and the peripheral portion where the strength of the input surface is weak.

FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram showing a method of defining an area of a peripheral portion for correcting detected coordinates on the input surface of the touch panel.

FIG. 4 is a table showing the correction values of coordinates in each area defined in FIG.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing an algorithm of a coordinate input process including a correction process performed when an input is made by touching the touch panel.

FIG. 6 is an explanatory diagram showing an execution result of coordinate input processing when a region inside the touch panel input surface is touched with a pen.

FIG. 7 is an explanatory diagram showing a coordinate input processing result when a peripheral area of the touch panel input surface is touched.

FIG. 8 is an explanatory diagram illustrating a state in which a user performs a touch while being aware of a difference between a touch position and a cursor display position on a peripheral portion of the touch panel input surface.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 Touch Panel 2 Coordinate Detection Section 3 Peripheral Part Judgment Section 4 CPU 5 ROM 6 RAM 7 I / O Interface 8 Offset Section 9 Coordinate Setting Section 10 LCD 11 Pen 12 Cursor

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. An information input device with a touch panel, comprising a touch panel, for detecting coordinates of a touched position on an input surface of the touch panel and inputting information according to the coordinates, wherein detected coordinates of the touched position. Determination means for determining whether or not is in a predetermined peripheral area of the input surface of the touch panel, and the detection means when the detection coordinates are determined to be in the peripheral area by the determination means. An information input device with a touch panel, comprising correction means for correcting coordinates so as to shift the coordinates toward the outside of the input surface of the touch panel. 2. The display device according to claim 1, further comprising a display device, wherein a cursor is displayed on a display surface of the display device at a position corresponding to coordinates set by the correction by the correction means. Information input device with touch panel.