Subject: VPL patents

From: [email-masked] (Lance Norskog)
Date: Tue, 4 Feb 92 10:38:13 PST

There are 3 VPL patents that I've found (there's a library a few miles
away, on of 70 in the country).  The first is the patent on Tom
Zimmerman's development of pasting sensors onto a glove or other
body parts the measure flexion.  Zimmerman's original design had
a tube with a light source at one end, a sensor at the other,
and different colors painted on the inside.  The sensor would
measure different amounts depending on the tube flexion because
different amounts of light bounced around inside.  The patent covers
that and the modern VPL design of fiber optic tubes scraped along
the sides.  The second patent is a revision of this one.

The third patent covers the direct manipulation concept, or some
aspects of it, by patenting the method of drawing a cursor
which gives a visual representation of your hardware input
device (glove) in its current 3D place, orientation, etc.
So, the floating glove is covered, but gestural interfaces are not.

Sorry, no numbers.

Lance Norskog