US Patent 7,681,194 with inventors Jan Van Ee and Eugene Shteyn, i.e. truly yours, issued this week, just over 11 years since the original application was filed. At the time, we put enough information in the disclosure to cover several future scenarios.
The claims look very complex, but at the bottom of the invention is a solution to the following dilemma:
1. on one hand, user interface of a controlling device should have a lot of icons (representations) of controllable devices, so that all of them can be controlled;
2. on the other hand, the interface of the controller should have very few icons, so that when needed user can easily find the right one.
We solve the problem by applying, in two steps, the separation in time/space principle. First, we aggregate devices into tasks; second, we make the interface time- and place-dependent. As the result, at any given time user is enabled to see only actionable icons. This is the basic idea.
Further, from studying patterns in system evolution, we know that control problems are preceded by detection problems. Therefore, we make our controller context-aware, i.e. capable of detecting what's around it. Once devices around the user are detected, we bring up tasks that can be accomplished with these devices. Voila!
tags: problem, solution, dilemma, patent, invention, interface, control, detection
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