Touch switch

Abstract

Abstract PURPOSE:To aim at improvement of the accuracy in detection by causing the emission beam of a luminescent element to be incident upon a light guide and moved back and forth within the light guide while it is repeating reflection before it is received by a reception element, and then discriminating, according to the quantity of light thus received, whether a finger, raindrop or the like is in contact with the outside of the light guide or not. CONSTITUTION:On one end of a light guide 1 are provided a luminescent element 2 and a reception element 3, and on the other end is provided a reflecting interface 4 respectively, and then, the emission beam of the luminescent element 2 is caused to be incident upon the light guide 1 and moved back and forth within the light guide 1 while it is repeating reflection before it is received by the reception element 3. And then, according to the quantity of light thus received, it is discriminated whether a finger F, raindrop or the like is in contact with the outside of the light guide 1. Said quantity of light received is almost the same as the quantity of light incident if the finger F, raindrops and the like are out of contact with the outside of the light guide 1 at the time when the incident light is moved back and forth within the light guide 1, while, if the finger F is in contact with it, the light penetrates through the contact part so that the quantity of the light decreases by that rate. Thereby, the accuracy in detection can be improved.

Inventors

• 👤 Ichiro Saeki
• 👤 Atsuhiro Takita

Bibliographic Details