PRESSURE-SENSITIVE KEYBOARD OR KEY INPUT MEANS

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a pressure-sensitive keyboard and keyboard arrangement having ten direction keys rendering all the functions on a computer standard keyboard. SOLUTION: In this pressure-sensitive keyboard and its arrangement used by a pressure-sensitive information processing system, input to the ten direction keys corresponding to ten fingers is carried out by applying force without changing finger positions. The respective direction keys having nine kinds of functions are provided with pressure-sensitive sensors and can detect the direction of the force applied by the finger. The force directions are classified into eight directions on the plane and the downward direction for selecting specific functions. COPYRIGHT: (C)2004,JPO