More Spain IP Communications Stories
February 03, 2010
Can This Film Turn Any Surface into a Touchscreen?
TMCnet Contributing Editor
Displax, a Portugal-based company, thinks so. According to industry observer Priya Ganapati, the company has a product they say can turn any surface into a touch-sensitive display.
The "thinner-than-paper polymer film can be stuck on glass, plastic or wood to turn it into an interactive input device," Ganapati says. It's about the thickness of human hair, 100 microns.
Industry observer Spencer Dalziel says while, "the technology was initially conceived for commercial environments the company doesn't want to miss any tricks for potential applications and claims that it will be a boon for LCD manufacturers."
“It is extremely powerful, precise and versatile,” she quotes Miguel Fonseca, chief business officer at Displax as saying. “You can use our film with on top of anything including E Ink, OLED and LCD displays.”
VentureBeat notes, "The uses for the multi-touch skins could be myriad. You can put one over a flat-panel display in a museum to turn it into a multi-touch kiosk. And since it can detect up to 16 fingers, more than one person can interact with the screen at any given time. The controller works with standard universal serial bus cables and ports."
As Dalziel notes, however, "The hardware in and of itself sounds interesting but Displax will have to work in tandem with other manufacturers and software driver developers, and garner viable support from software applications, if it really wants make any impact. At the moment, it sounds like a great research and development project that accidentally got manufactured."
“If Displax can do this for larger displays, it will really be one of the first companies to do what we call massive multi-touch,” Daniel Wigdor, a user experience architect for Microsoft (News - Alert) who focuses on multi-touch and gestural computing, tells Ganapati. “If you look at existing commercial technology for large touch displays, they use infrared camera that can sense only two to four points of contact. Displax takes us to the next step.”
Tech talk: According to Ganapati, "A grid of nanowires are embedded in the thin polymer film that is just about 100 microns thick. A microcontroller processes the multiple input signals it receives from the grid. A finger or two placed on the screen causes an electrical disturbance. The microcontroller analyzes this to decode the location of each input on that grid. The film comes with its own firmware, driver -- which connect via a USB connection -- and a control panel for user calibration and settings."
Displax also allows users to interact with the screen by blowing on it, and says the first screens featuring its multi-touch technology will start shipping in July.
VentureBeat notes, "The uses for the multi-touch skins could be myriad. You can put one over a flat-panel display in a museum to turn it into a multi-touch kiosk. And since it can detect up to 16 fingers, more than one person can interact with the screen at any given time. The controller works with standard universal serial bus cables and ports."
As Dalziel notes, however, "The hardware in and of itself sounds interesting but Displax will have to work in tandem with other manufacturers and software driver developers, and garner viable support from software applications, if it really wants make any impact. At the moment, it sounds like a great research and development project that accidentally got manufactured."
“If Displax can do this for larger displays, it will really be one of the first companies to do what we call massive multi-touch,” Daniel Wigdor, a user experience architect for Microsoft (News - Alert) who focuses on multi-touch and gestural computing, tells Ganapati. “If you look at existing commercial technology for large touch displays, they use infrared camera that can sense only two to four points of contact. Displax takes us to the next step.”
Tech talk: According to Ganapati, "A grid of nanowires are embedded in the thin polymer film that is just about 100 microns thick. A microcontroller processes the multiple input signals it receives from the grid. A finger or two placed on the screen causes an electrical disturbance. The microcontroller analyzes this to decode the location of each input on that grid. The film comes with its own firmware, driver -- which connect via a USB connection -- and a control panel for user calibration and settings."
Displax also allows users to interact with the screen by blowing on it, and says the first screens featuring its multi-touch technology will start shipping in July.
David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi