JP2011205551A - Message creation apparatus, and message creation method - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To easily and quickly create a message such as an e-mail even for a visually impaired person.
A cellular phone includes a mail function unit that executes an e-mail function, a contact detection unit that detects a user's contact using a touch panel provided in the mobile device, and a detected user's contact rhythm. And a message determination unit 13 for determining a message to be input as the body of the e-mail.
[Selection] Figure 1

Description

  The present invention relates to a message creation device and a message creation method for creating a message such as an electronic mail.

  2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, a message such as an e-mail is transmitted from a mobile terminal. The message to be transmitted here is usually created by the user sequentially pressing the buttons to which the input characters are assigned on the operation unit provided in the portable terminal.

JP 2003-87366 A

  However, it is difficult for visually impaired people to create messages easily and quickly with the above message input method, and it is possible to easily send e-mails and the like as those who do not visually impaired. There wasn't. Alternatively, unless an optional product (dedicated device) is connected to the portable terminal, a message cannot be created and an e-mail or the like cannot be transmitted.

  The present invention has been made to solve the above-described problems, and a message creation device and message creation that can easily and quickly create a message such as an e-mail even for a visually impaired person. It aims to provide a method.

  In order to achieve the above object, a message creation device according to the present invention is a message creation device that accepts an input of a message from a user, a contact detection unit that detects a user's contact at a specific position of the device, and a contact Message determining means for determining an input message in accordance with a user's contact rhythm detected by the detecting means.

  In the message creation device according to the present invention, when a user touches a specific position with a predetermined rhythm, the contact is detected and a message input according to the rhythm of the contact is determined. That is, the user can input a message by touching with a rhythm corresponding to the input message. As a result, according to the message creation device of the present invention, even a visually impaired person can easily and quickly create a message such as an e-mail.

  The message determining means stores in advance information indicating a correspondence relationship between a user's contact rhythm and an input message, and determines a message to be input based on the information indicating the corresponding relationship. Is desirable. According to this structure, the message input according to the detected user's contact rhythm can be determined appropriately and reliably, and the present invention can be implemented appropriately and reliably.

  It is preferable that the contact detection means detects the contact strength of the user, and the message determination means determines the input message according to the user contact strength detected by the contact detection means. . According to this configuration, the contact pattern of the user corresponding to the input message can be increased, and for example, the user can easily input an emergency message, an emphasized message, or the like.

  It is desirable that the message creation device further includes a transmission unit that transmits the message determined by the message determination unit. According to this configuration, even a person with visual impairment can easily and quickly transmit a message such as an e-mail.

  It is desirable for the contact detection means to detect the user's contact with the touch panel provided in the device itself. According to this structure, a user's contact can be detected appropriately and reliably, and the present invention can be implemented appropriately and reliably.

  By the way, the present invention can be described as an invention of a message creation apparatus as described above, and can also be described as an invention of a message creation method as follows. This is substantially the same invention only in different categories, and has the same operations and effects.

  That is, the message creation method according to the present invention is a message creation method in a message creation device that accepts input of a message from a user, the contact detection step for detecting a user's contact at a specific position of the own device, and contact detection. A message determining step of determining a message to be input in accordance with the user contact rhythm detected in the step.

  According to the present invention, a user can input a message by touching with a rhythm corresponding to the message to be input. Therefore, even a visually impaired person can easily and quickly create a message such as an e-mail. be able to.

It is a figure which shows the function structure of the mobile telephone which is the message preparation apparatus which concerns on embodiment of this invention. It is a figure which shows the hardware constitutions of the mobile telephone which concerns on embodiment of this invention. It is a figure which shows typically about the rhythm of a touch (contact). It is a figure which shows the information memorize | stored in order to determine a message in a message determination part. It is a flowchart which shows the process which performs the prior registration for implementing this invention with the mobile telephone which concerns on embodiment of this invention. It is a flowchart which shows the process (message determination method) performed with the mobile telephone which concerns on embodiment of this invention.

  Hereinafter, preferred embodiments of a message creation device and a message creation method according to the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings. In the description of the drawings, the same elements are denoted by the same reference numerals, and redundant description is omitted. Further, the dimensional ratios in the drawings do not necessarily match those described.

  FIG. 1 shows a mobile phone 10 which is a message creation device according to the present embodiment. The mobile phone 10 is a device that is carried by a user and has a communication function such as mobile communication. As will be described later, the mobile phone 10 has an e-mail function, and creates a message as the body of the e-mail to be transmitted by a user operation.

  FIG. 2 shows a hardware configuration of the mobile phone 10. As shown in FIG. 2, a mobile phone 10 includes a CPU (Central Processing Unit) 101, a RAM (Random Access Memory) 102 and a ROM 103 (Read Only Memory) which are main storage devices, an operation unit 104, a wireless communication unit 105, a display. 106, antenna 107, touch panel 108, and the like. Here, the touch panel 108 detects a user's contact. The touch panel 108 may be provided with a force sensor that detects the strength (pressure) of the user's contact. By operating these components, each function of the cellular phone 10 described later is exhibited.

  Subsequently, functions of the mobile phone 10 according to the present invention will be described. As shown in FIG. 1, the mobile phone 10 includes a mail function unit 11, a contact detection unit 12, and a message determination unit 13.

  The mail function unit 11 is a means responsible for an electronic mail function transmitted and received by the mobile phone 10. Except for the functions described below, the e-mail function by the mail function unit 11 is the same as the conventional e-mail function. The body of the e-mail transmitted by the mail function unit 11 is a sentence (message) input from the message determination unit 13 as described later. Further, when the body of the mail is input from the message determination unit 13 as the body of the email, the email of the body may be transmitted as it is (without the user performing a transmission operation). In that case, an e-mail destination or the like is determined in advance. In other words, the mail function unit 11 is a transmission unit that transmits the message determined by the message determination unit 13.

  In addition, the mail function unit 11 may be activated by pressing a button assigned to the mail function in the same manner as a normal mobile phone, or may be performed by an operation on the touch panel 108, for example. For example, the mail function may be activated by detecting that the user touches a plurality of points on the touch panel 108 at the same time.

  The contact detection unit 12 is a contact detection unit that detects a user's contact at a specific position of the mobile phone 10. Specifically, the contact detection unit 12 detects that the user has touched the sensor unit of the touch panel 108 using the touch panel 108 described above. The contact detection unit 12 outputs information indicating the detected contact state of the user to the touch panel 108 to the message determination unit 13. Moreover, the contact detection part 12 is good also as detecting the strength of a user's contact. In that case, information indicating the strength is also output to the message determination unit 13. The contact detection unit 12 always detects a user's contact when a message is input, for example, when a mail function by the mail function unit 11 is activated.

  As shown in FIG. 3, the contact state of the user input from the contact detection unit 12 to the message determination unit 13 includes a state 21 in which the user is not in contact and a state 22 in which the user is in contact in real time and in time series. Information (signal) that can be grasped. When the contact strength is also detected, it is represented by an information value or a signal magnitude. In FIG. 3, the horizontal direction represents the passage of time.

  The message determination unit 13 is a message determination unit that determines a message to be input according to the user's contact rhythm detected by the contact detection unit 12. The user contact rhythm is a temporal change in the user contact. For example, as one rhythm, as shown in FIG. 3, from the state of not touching for a certain period of time (for example, 3 seconds), contact is made for 0.1 seconds, then is not touched for 0.1 seconds, and is then touched for 0.1 seconds. After that, there is a state in which no contact is made for a certain time (for example, 3 seconds). The above rhythm is expressed as “tan” because the user's operation on the touch panel 108 is an operation that is continuously pressed twice.

  The message determining unit 13 stores in advance information indicating the correspondence between the user's contact rhythm and the input message in a memory or the like of the mobile phone 10. Specifically, as shown in FIG. 4, “sentence”, “touch rhythm timing”, and “touch strength” are stored in association with each other. “Sentence” is an input message and is information including a character string.

  “Timing of touch rhythm” is information indicating the rhythm of contact, and is information indicating the rhythm of contact of the user as shown in FIG. The time length of the user's contact rhythm does not necessarily have to be a fixed length. This information corresponds to information indicating a time-series contact state input from the contact detection unit 12.

  “Touch strength” is information indicating whether the user's contact is strong (heavy press) or weak (light press), and corresponds to the user's contact strength input from the contact detection unit 12. It should be noted that a threshold value is set in advance to determine how much contact strength is specific and whether the user's contact is strong or weak.

  Here, if the “touch rhythm timing” is the same and the “touch strength” is different, it is possible to associate “text” with different intention strengths in the same intention message. Good. For example, as shown in FIG. 4, if “touch strength” is “lightly pressed” with respect to the “touch rhythm timing” of “tatan”, the text “thank you” and “touch strength” are “ “Double press” is associated with the sentence “Thank you so much”. If “touch strength” is “double press”, it may be an emergency sentence.

  The message determination unit 13 specifies the user's contact rhythm (contact pattern) based on the input from the contact detection unit 12. When contact is detected from a state in which the message determination unit 13 has not been in contact for a certain period of time (for example, 3 seconds), the rhythm of the user's contact starts from that timing (the timing indicated by the broken line 23 in FIG. 3). Recognize that Then, when a state in which no contact is detected for a certain time (for example, 3 seconds) continues thereafter, it is recognized that the user's contact rhythm has ended. The message determination unit 13 uses the contact pattern from the start to the end of the rhythm as the contact rhythm.

  Subsequently, the message determination unit 13 matches (or approximates) the rhythm of the user's contact specified as described above with each rhythm of the “touch rhythm timing” stored in the table shown in FIG. ). This determination can be made based on a technique such as waveform pattern matching. At this time, the message determination unit 13 corresponds to any of the “touch strength” stored in the table shown in FIG. 4 for the contact strength associated with the user contact rhythm specified as described above. Determine whether. This determination is made, for example, by determining whether the average pressure intensity while the user is touching is greater than or equal to a threshold (heavy press) or less (light press).

  The message determination unit 13 acquires a character string of “sentence” associated with “touch rhythm timing” and “touch strength” that matches the user contact rhythm specified as described above. . For example, if “touch rhythm timing” is “tatan” and “touch strength” is “lightly pressed”, “sentence” “thank you” is acquired.

  The message determination unit 13 determines the character string of “sentence” acquired as described above as a message to be input to the body of the electronic mail. The determined message is input from the message determination unit 13 to the mail function unit 11 as a message to be input to the body of the electronic mail.

  The information stored in the table shown in FIG. 4 by the message determination unit 13 may be registered in advance. This pre-registration is performed, for example, as in the flowchart shown in FIG. In this process, a character string stored in the “text” of the table shown in FIG. 4 is input by the message determination unit 13 by operating a button provided on the mobile phone 10 of the user (S01).

  Subsequently, the user touches the touch panel of the mobile phone 10 with a rhythm corresponding to the character string. This contact is detected by the contact detection unit 12, and the rhythm of the contact and the strength of the contact are specified by the message determination unit 13 in the same manner as described above (S02). Here, when the rhythm of the contact cannot be specified or the same pattern is already stored (registered), the user is contacted again. In the message determination unit 13, the input character string, the contact rhythm, and the contact strength are associated with each other and stored in the table as information of “text”, “touch rhythm timing”, and “touch strength”. (S03). The above processing is the pre-registration processing of information stored in the table shown in FIG.

  Subsequently, processing (message creation method) executed by the mobile phone 10 according to the present embodiment will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG. This process is a process for transmitting an e-mail from the mobile phone 10.

  First, in the cellular phone 10, the mail function unit 11 is in a state of creating a text of an email (mail text creation screen) (S11). This is performed by a user operation. For example, as in the case of the normal mobile phone 10, the above state is obtained by accepting the selection of “create new mail” from the menu for selecting the function of the mobile phone 10. Alternatively, the above-described state may be obtained by performing a reply operation on the received electronic mail. Further, the above-described state may be set by detecting that the user touches a plurality of points on the touch panel 108 at the same time, or that the user strongly presses the touch panel 108 (presses with a pressure equal to or higher than a certain threshold value). .

  Subsequently, in order to create a message by the user, the touch panel 108 is touched with a rhythm and intensity corresponding to the message. The contact detection unit 12 detects the contact and outputs information related to the contact to the message determination unit 13 (S12, contact detection step).

  Subsequently, the message determination unit 13 identifies the rhythm of the user's contact based on the input from the contact detection unit 12, and “text” associated with the rhythm and the strength associated with the input from the contact detection unit 12. Is determined as a message to be the body of the e-mail (S13, message determination step). The determined message is output to the mail function unit 11.

  The message is displayed and output as the text of the e-mail by the mail function unit 11 (S14). S12 to S14 may be repeatedly performed while the mobile phone 10 is in a state of creating the text of the e-mail.

  Subsequently, the e-mail with the text input as described above is transmitted by the mail function unit 11 (S15, message transmission step). The e-mail is transmitted to a designated destination via the mobile communication network. This transmission is performed in response to an operation for transmitting an e-mail from the user, for example. Specifically, an operation for sending an e-mail in response to an operation (e.g., pressing the touch panel 108) to return to the state (e-mail creation top screen) for displaying the e-mail address or title from the user. (For example, pressing the touch panel 108 after the above operation) is received and an e-mail is transmitted. Alternatively, an e-mail may be transmitted by pressing a mail transmission button provided on the mobile phone 10 as in the conventional case. In this case, the destination and title of the e-mail are specified by the user operation before the transmission process.

  In addition, when a single message is input by the processing of S12 to S14 (without requiring an operation for transmission by the user), an e-mail having the message as a text is set at a preset destination. May be sent. Furthermore, it may be set to either one that is transmitted without requiring user operation when it is input for each message, or one that is transmitted after a user operation.

  As described above, in the present embodiment, when the user touches the touch panel of the mobile phone 10 with a predetermined rhythm, the contact is detected, and a message that is input as the body of an email to be transmitted is detected according to the rhythm of the contact. It is determined. That is, the user can input a message by touching with a rhythm corresponding to the input message. Thus, according to the present embodiment, even a person with visual impairment can easily and quickly create a text message such as an e-mail without requiring fine button operations. Specifically, the present embodiment can be realized if the mobile phone 10 is provided with a device for detecting contact such as the touch panel 108, and there is no need to provide a special optional product.

  Further, if information such as that shown in FIG. 4 is stored in advance as in the present embodiment and a message to be input is determined based on the information, the detected user contact can be detected appropriately and reliably. The message input according to the rhythm can be determined, and the present invention can be implemented appropriately and reliably.

  Further, if the message is determined according to the contact strength as in the present embodiment, the contact pattern of the user corresponding to the input message can be increased. For example, the user can easily input an emergency message, a message that emphasizes the intention, and the like.

  In addition, if a means for transmitting an input message is provided as in this embodiment, even a person with visual impairment can easily and quickly transmit a message such as an e-mail.

  In addition, if the user's contact is detected by the touch panel 108 as in the present embodiment, the present invention can be implemented appropriately and reliably. However, the touch panel is not necessarily required as long as it can detect a user's contact.

  Moreover, according to this embodiment, when a user encounters an accident etc., the information can be obtained by the mobile phone 10 and emergency information can be notified to the family instantly. Alternatively, in addition to accidents, other emergency information, such as weather information, earthquakes, train delays, etc., can be quickly notified of the user's situation by pre-registering messages according to them. it can. It can also be used on a daily basis, such as notifying the user when the user returns home.

  In the present embodiment, the message creation device is the mobile phone 10, but it is not necessarily required to be the mobile phone 10. Further, it is not always necessary to create a message in the body of the e-mail. The message creation device according to the present invention may be any device that creates a message and can detect a user's contact.

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 10 ... Mobile phone, 11 ... Mail function part, 12 ... Contact detection part, 13 ... Message determination part, 101 ... CPU, 102 ... RAM, 103 ... ROM, 104 ... Operation part, 105 ... Wireless communication part, 106 ... Display, 107 ... antenna, 108 ... touch panel.

Claims (6)

A message creation device that accepts a message input from a user,
Contact detection means for detecting a user's contact at a specific position of the device;
Message determination means for determining a message to be input in accordance with a user's contact rhythm detected by the contact detection means;
A message creation device comprising:   The message determining means stores in advance information indicating a correspondence relationship between a user's contact rhythm and an input message, and determines a message to be input based on the information indicating the correspondence relationship. The message creating apparatus according to claim 1. The contact detection means detects the contact strength of the user,
The message determination means determines a message to be input according to the contact strength of the user detected by the contact detection means;
The message creation device according to claim 1 or 2, characterized in that   The message creation device according to claim 1, further comprising a transmission unit that transmits the message determined by the message determination unit.   The message creation device according to claim 1, wherein the contact detection unit detects a user's contact with a touch panel provided in the device itself. A message creation method in a message creation device that accepts a message input from a user,
A contact detection step for detecting a user's contact at a specific position of the device;
A message determination step for determining a message to be input in accordance with a user's contact rhythm detected in the contact detection step;
To create a message containing

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