SUBMITTED BYVIVEK GUPTA(0905210064) AKASH SINGHAL (0905210008)

Introduction History How Touch Screen Works? Touchscreen Technologies Comparison of Touchscreen Technologies Touchscreen acquisition Flowchart Pros and Cons Limitations Uses Conclusion

A touchscreen is an electronic visual display that can detect the presence and location of a touch within the display area

The screens are sensitive to pressure; a user interacts with the computer by touching pictures or words on the screen

Touchscreens emerged from corporate research labs in the second half of the 1940s. The first touch screen was a capacitive touch screen developed by American inventor G Samuel Hurst Until 1980 , most touchscreen could only sense 1 point of contact at a time .

The HP-150 from 1983 was one of the world's earliest commercial touch screen computer

Main Touch Screen Components:

Touch

Sensor Controller Software Driver

A touch screen sensor is a clear glass panel with a touch responsive surface which is placed over a display screen so that the responsive area of the panel covers the viewable area of the display screen. The sensor generally has an electrical current or signal going through it and touching the screen causes a voltage or signal change. This voltage change is used to determine the location of the touch to the screen

The controller is a small PC card that connects between the touch sensor and the PC. It takes information from the touch sensor and translates it into information that PC can understand.

 The

driver is a software that allows the touch screen and computer to work together. It tells the operating system how to interpret the touch event information that is sent from the controller. touch screen drivers today are a mouse-emulation type driver. This makes touching the screen the same as clicking your mouse at the same location on the screen.
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Most

Resistive touchscreen Capacitive touchscreen

Infrared touchscreen
Surface acoustic wave (SAW) touchscreen

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Polyester Film . Top Resistive Layer. Conductive Transparent Metal Coating. Bottom Resistive Layer . Insulating Dots . Glass Substrate

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Resistive touch screen is composed of a flexible top layer and a rigid bottom layer separated by insulating dots, attached to a touch screen controller. The inside surface of each of the two layers is coated with a transparent metal oxide coating Pressing the flexible top sheet creates electrical contact between the resistive layers, producing a switch closing in the circuit. The controller gets the alternating voltages between the two layers and converts them into the digital X and Y coordinates of the activated area.

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 Structure Capacitive technology consists of a uniform conductive coating on a glass panel. Electrodes around the panels edge evenly distribute a low voltage across the conductive layer, creating a uniform electric field.

Working principle

A human body is an electric conductor, so when you touch the screen with a finger, a slight amount of current is drawn, creating a voltage drop. The current respectively drifts to the electrodes on the four corners. Theoretically, the amount of current that drifts through the four electrodes should be proportional to the distance from the touch point to the four corners. The controller precisely calculates the proportion of the current passed through the four electrodes and figures out the X/Y coordinate of a touch point.

Infrared (IR) technology relies on the interruption of an IR light grid in front of the display screen. The touch frame contains a row of IR-light emitting diode (LEDs) and photo transistors, each mounted on two opposite sides to create a grid of invisible infrared light. The IR controller sequentially pulses the LEDs to create a grid of IR light beams. When a stylus, such as a finger, enters the grid, it obstructs the beams. One or more photo transistors from each axis detect the absence of light and transmit signals that identifies the x and y coordinates.

Principle
Surface waves are readily absorbed when a soft object such as a fingertip touches the substrate. SAW Touch Screen use pure glass with transmitting and receiving piezoelectric transducers for both the X and Y axes. The touch screen controller sends an electrical signal to the transmitting transducer, which converts the signal into ultrasonic waves within the glass. When you touch the screen, you absorb a portion of the wave traveling across it. The received signal is then compared to the stored digital map, the change recognized, and a coordinate calculate.

Technology Transparence

Capacitive Very good >92% Good

SAW Very good >92% Good

Infrared Very good >92% Limited due to spacing of IR sensors Potential for False activation or dead zones From Surface Contaminants Any substrate

Resistive 75%~85%

Resolution

good

Surface Contaminants /durability

Resistant to moisture and other surface contaminants

Adversely affected by moisture or Surface contaminants

Unaffected by Surface contaminants. Polyester top sheet is easily scratched Polyester top sheet, glass substrate with ITO coating Can use any pointing device

Sensor substrate Glass with ITO Glass with ITO coating coating

Touch method

Human touch

finger, gloved hand or soft tip

Can use any pointing device

Touchscreen Acquisition Flowchart

Initially the touch screen controllers pen interrupt (PENIRQ) is held high. When the user touches the screen this line is made low indicating the drivers to read X, Y and if needed Z coordinate. Drivers for X, Y and Z are activated in succession to take the reading. In the averaging stage the inputs which are read are checked to fall within a permissible limit and if found to fall outside this limit then these are discarded and are to be read again. This is computed for all three coordinates. Thus the end result of this reading is the coordinate where the touch has been sensed.

PROS
User friendly Fast response Error free input Use finger , fingernail , gloved hands , stylus or any soft tip pointer Easy to clean Does not interfere mouse and keyboard Make computing easy , powerful and fun It benefits children

CONS
Finger

stress Fingerprints screen has to be really big not to miss things when pressing them with your finger big screen leads to low battery life touch screen means screen cant be read too well in direct sunlight as it applies an additional not 100% transparent Fatigue

ATMs Phones Computers Gaming machines Point of Sale Industrial controls Hand held electronics

Advanced touch screen phones expected to increase from 200,000 shipped in 2006 to 30 million units by 2012. Regular touch technology has already been incorporated into 38 million phones as of 2006, and is estimated to be in nearly 90 million phones by 2012.

Microsoft Surface (Surface) is a commercial computing platform that enables people to use touch and real world objects to share digital content at the same time.

Invented by Jeffery Han Made by Perceptive Pixel Inc. No Mouse or Keyboard required. Multiple Contact Points i.e. Multiple users can use the Microsoft Surface at a time. Earlier Made for Military Use Only Currently used by US Military & CNN.

Though the touch screen technology contains some limitations its very user friendly, fast, accurate, easy for the novices & fun to operate. It is widely accepted.