24 January 2008

Nokia’s Virtual Keyboard Patent!
Real Taste of Virtual Reality!!

Nokia’s Virtual Keyboard Patent! A Real Taste of Virtual Reality!! Well, virtual keyboard isn’t the breaking news, there are bunch of other solution's out there and we have already wrote few times in the past about the virtual pocket-size device that projects a full-size keyboard through infrared technology onto any flat surface.

Users could then type on the infrared images as if typing on conventional keyboard on any flat surface.  But Nokia's patent is still innovative as it describes the using of the mobile phone camera as its standard equipment to avoid separate projector, and actually it is more related to the software than to the hardware part.

The patent, titled, "Mobile device with virtual keyboard," does away with the need for a separate projector entirely, by instead using the onboard camera and optical sensors that are already present in typical mobiles.  

The digital camera on the phone is used to capture the movement and the position of user's fingers, and project them on a virtual keyboard shown on the phone display, in real time, something very close to the very well know Mosquitoes game for the Nokia S60 2nd edition devices.

 Furthermore the phone is also equipped with the sensors to capture the sound or vibrations, generated as the user taps on the working surface (e.g. desk or table) and convert them into normal input commands. Quite interesting technology, although it will definitely require some time to get use to it.  

Nokia virtual keyboard patent

You can download the patent application (1.12 MB .pdf) from here.