UniTap - How it works

Our patent pending technology UniTap combines advantages of miniature and passive chording keyboards. The main idea is based on interpreting activation of several switches as a meaningful function; however, unlike common practice of other solutions, this does not prevent from having uniform legend symbols placements. Such approach allows for preserving ergonomics of full-size key caps, while increasing functional elements density from 8 to 16 times comparing to the regular computer keyboards.

To give the clear picture of the principles of our invention, let us consider example of its utilization in a small telephone-style keypad (although the technology itself is not restricted to any specific layout). In this case, the numbers are just printed on the keypad surface 14, and each number is surrounded by 4 miniature pin keys 10 as shown in figure. These keys are placed in the corners of each rectangle 12, which represents unique symbol, and, thus, 4 adjacent rectangles share the same key in their common corner. The dimensions of such rectangular areas are about one third of the width of the adult finger or standard computer key cap.

Suppose now that you would like to type number "8". In order to do so you simply touch the respective symbol printed on the surface. When your finger 18 touches this symbol, it at the same time hits corner keys 16 (although you even might not notice it in some implementations). The device monitors the status of these keys and accepts numbers (or symbols) when their respective combinations are triggered. In our case an appropriate combinations would be a set of 4 keys being at corners of the same rectangle and also its subsets that can uniquely identify the symbol (for example, 2 keys spanning diagonal of a symbol area).

The trick is that such sharing of the pin keys between symbols allows for making size of the area required by each symbol much smaller compared to the regular keyboard. For example, the numeric keypad in the figure is about 9 times smaller then regular-sized numeric keypad (some implementations allows for 16 times size reduce), while it is used with nearly equivalent comfort. Additionally, legend symbols are placed uniformly and in natural way, which does not require learning from users.