Touch-sensitive sheet member, input device and electronic apparatus
View Patent ↗A touch-sensitive sheet member contains a body having predetermined hardness and a sheet shape and a sense-of-touch-representing unit that represents a sense of touch. The sense-of-touch-representing unit has a predetermined size and is arranged at positions of the body or at a predetermined position of the body. The touch-sensitive sheet member also contains a medium-supplying unit that supplies medium to the sense-of-touch-representing unit.
1. An input apparatus comprising:
a touch-sensitive member including
a body having a sheet shape,
a sense-of-touch-representing unit formed on the body and including a plurality of sensing elements, each of the sensing elements being directly fluidly connected to one another, and
a medium-supplying unit connected to the body and configured to supply a medium to and withdraw the medium from the plurality of sensing elements thereby enabling a change in shape of each of the plurality of sensing elements based on a volume change of the medium contained within the sense-of-touch representing unit;
a display unit; and
a processor controlling the medium-supply unit to change the shape of the sensing elements corresponding to image contents displayed on the display unit.
2. The input apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein the medium-supplying unit includes a pressure generator that changes the pressure of the medium inside the sense-of-touch representing unit.
3. The input apparatus according to claim 2 , wherein the pressure generator includes a piezoelectric device.
4. The input apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein each sensing element includes a plurality of bag portions.
5. The input apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein the body includes a flow channel fluidly connecting the medium-supplying unit to each of the plurality of sensing elements.