Design and Feasibility Study: Customized Virtual Buttons for Electronic Mobile Devices

Smartphone users often want to customize the positions and functions of physical buttons to accommodate their own usage patterns; however, this is unfeasible for electronic mobile devices based on COTS (Commercial Off-The-Shelf) due to high production costs and hardware design constraints. In this letter, we present the design and implementation of customized virtual buttons that are localized using only common built-in sensors of electronic mobile devices. We develop sophisticated strategies firstly to detect when a user taps one of the virtual buttons, and secondly to locate the position of the tapped virtual button. The virtual-button scheme is implemented and demonstrated in a COTS-based smartphone. The feasibility study shows that, with up to nine virtual buttons on five different sides of the smartphone, the proposed virtual buttons can operate with greater than 90% accuracy. key words: virtual buttons, mobile devices, accelerometer, gyroscope, design and feasibility study