On September ninth Apple introduced us to Apple Watch and one of the features that were highlighted was the display's ability to discern the difference between a tap and a touch using new force sensors. We briefly covered that in our report titled "Apple's new Products Brings a new Round of Patents to Life."

Today, a new patent application from Apple reveals more of the work being done in this area of integrating force sensors into displays for Apple Watch and for other iDevices like the iPhone.

Apple Invents Displays with Two-Dimensional Touch Sensors

Apple's invention relates to touch screen displays that provide a two-dimensional touch sensor. The two-dimensional touch sensor may be used to gather position information in connection with a touch event. The position information may include a position in a first lateral dimension and a position in a second lateral dimension that is perpendicular to the first lateral dimension. For example, the two-dimensional touch sensor may gather vertical and horizontal position information for each touch event.

The position sensors may be based on strain gauge sensors or other force sensors, capacitive sensors having multiple elongated transparent capacitive electrodes that span the display, acoustic sensors, light-based sensors, and other types of sensors.

Apple notes that their two-dimensional touch sensor that's integrated into the touch screen display may relate to Apple Watch, a future iPhone and other devices including the following: media players, other handheld portable devices, somewhat smaller portable devices such as pendant devices, glasses, earpieces, or other wearable or miniature devices, gaming equipment, tablet computers, notebook computers, desktop computers, televisions, computer monitors, computers integrated into computer displays, or other electronic equipment.

Apple's patent FIG. 5 noted below is a top view of an illustrative configuration for the device showing how touch sensor 42 in the device may have structures 44T and 44B for vertical position sensor 44. The force sensors are identified as being structures 44T and 44B that are located at opposing ends of the horizontal position sensor. 

The force sensors noted below may be implemented using structures that exhibit a change in resistance, capacitance, or inductance with compression such as resistive foam, piezoelectric force sensor structure, structures based on strain gauges, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) force sensor structures, or other force sensor devices.

Apple credits Warren Jones, Shayan Malek and Rasamy Phouthavong as the inventors of patent application 20140293145 which was originally filed in Q2 2013. For more details, see Apple's patent filing.

Apple Continues to Fine-Tune their Universal Dock

On another front, The US Patent and Trademark Office have revealed that Apple has refined their current granted patent for a universal docking station that they first introduced in a 2009 patent application.

As usual, the refinements are restricted to the invention's patent claims. To review the differences in patent claims, compare Apple's latest application to their standing granted patent.

A Note for Tech Sites covering our Report: We ask tech sites covering our report to kindly limit the use of our graphics to one image. Thanking you in advance for your cooperation. 

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