ALEXANDRIA, Va., May 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,631,733, issued on May 19, was assigned to STMicroelectronics (Grenoble 2) SAS (Grenoble, France).
"Contactless actionable button" was invented by Giovanni Scozzola (Saint Egreve, France).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The present description concerns a button capable of being activated by the proximity of a user's finger, including: a time-of-flight distance sensor; and a control circuit, coupled to the distance sensor and configured to transmit a control signal, where the control circuit is configured to perform a switching of the signal, between a first state and a second state, conditioned at least by the detection by the sensor, for a...