22-12-2010, 11:16 AM
Prepared by:
Laehyun Kim, Wanjoo Park, Hyunchul Cho, and Sehyung Park
Intelligence & Interaction Research Center, Korea Institute of Science and Technology
Abstract
We introduce a new universal remote controller that gives easy-to-control interface for home devices such as TV, video/audio player, room lighting and temperature control. In order to use a conventional remote controller, one should study an instruction manual and remember function for each button. In addition, the remote controller does not provide an intuitive interface so the user has difficulty in searching the right button among a lot of small buttons. Our remote controller addresses these limitations by using a touch screen, a force-feedback dial knob, and a single button instead of many buttons. We suggest an example scenario to interact with a conventional TV set using our remote controller.
INTRODUCTION
Usually, home appliances such as a TV, a radio, a video/audio player, a home theater, and a room temperature/lighting control come with remote controllers that are used to select items and change status. As a result, people need several remote controllers to interact with home devices. In addition, each controller has different look and feel and consists of a lot of buttons. This configuration gives the user difficulty in browsing and finding correct buttons. In order to address these limitations, we developed a universal remote controller that provides easy-to-use control device (see Fig. 1). The remote controller we have developed consists of a touch screen, a force-feedback dial knob, and a single button instead of many buttons.
The touch screen displays visual information and allows the user to select items by touching them on the screen. The forcefeedback dial knob is used to search items by rotating the knob. It generates various tactile/haptic effects such as spring, friction, detent, hard stop, and combination of these effects. This work has been supported by Tangible Interaction Technology Project in Korea Institute of Science and Technology.
CONFIGURATION OF THE SYSTEM
The prototype modules are shown in Fig. 2. The main processor is the AVR ATMEGA-128 processor and the DAC (Digital to Analog Convertor) is DAC0800 from National Semiconductor. DC motor is used to generate various haptic patterns. We use RE25 with a gear box of 5:1 ratio from Maxon motor. The motor works with 24V/0.6A and 28.8mNm torque. The Dial knob is installed on the motor gear box and allows the user to rotate the knob and feel haptic effects which are programmed along the angular position. The Encoder to measure the angular position is MR 128 with 1000 pulse per turn from Maxon motor. The encoder counter is LS7166 by LSI computer systems. It is 24bits quadrature counter and DC to 25MHz count frequency. Touch LCD Module (is EZTFT350T by Alls Technology) is used to display visual information and to allow touch input. It displays 3.5 inch QVGA 320ⅹ240 pixels with 24bits true color. For the additional natural and fun input, we use a 3-axis accelerator sensor (MMA 7260Q by Freescale). HAPTIC EFFECT
The haptic feedback dial can generate several haptic behaviors such as friction, detent, jog shuttle, hard stops and a combination of these behaviors on the same knob interface, For instance, the detent effect physically resists or arrests the rotation of the knob around notches. The jog shuttle effect pulls the knob to a set position working like a spring. The user can design and determine the most desirable haptic profile for the situation. For instance, the detent effect would be used for TV channel selection, jog shuttle is for searching video contents, friction effect is for adjusting TV volume and room temperature/lighting, and hard stop can set the minimum and maximum points. AN EXAMPLE SCENARIO FOR TV
In this section, we describe an application example to interact with a conventional television set. The user can see the initial image containing menu, TV channel, sound volume, image control, and mute on the touch screen and select an item by touching the item. If the user select TV channel item, he/she can browse channels by spin the dial. At the same time, the screen displays the visual information correspondingly in The haptic dial generates the pre-programmed detent effect and provides a little strong feeling with high torque around the channel the user prefers. In case of volume control, the user feels the friction effect which increases as the volume increases. It can provide very intuitive and fun feeling. CONCLUSION
Today many home devices are linked home network and require as many remote controllers as the devices. We want to control a variety device through only one universal controller and we want to control a variety function with haptic dial of this controller. We suggest a universal remote controller that consists of a touch screen, haptic dial, and a single button unlike conventional remote controllers having many buttons. Combination of touch screen and haptic dial introduces many possible user interfaces having fun effects and intuitive control. We suggest an example scenario to control a TV set using our remote controller. [attachment=7500]
