A Quick Dip into the Sea of Touch Technology!

Over a decade and half ago one could not imagine that touch screen devices would become part of our daily activity. Over then it was just limited to Apple INC and O2 Hand Phones now termed as smart phones but as time and technology progressed, technology brought touch gestures virtually to almost every one.

Lately the following Touch Screen technologies are widely used:

• Optical Touch Screen
• Infrared Touch Screen
• Gesture Based Touch Screen

Optical Touch Screen

With the rapid development in Gaming technology and Gadgets evolution the optical touch has gained significant importance. The optical touch screen has sensors around it and these track the movement of any object that is close enough by detecting the interruption through an infrared beam. As no Hardware works without Software, the optical sensors are then realized by the compatible software and then the screen distortion is made according to the touch made. The light is then emitted across a plane surface and depending on the current situation of the screen; it can become active or passive. Optical touch screen is cost effective with multiple touch feature and a super-fast response. Optical screens are widely used in vendor’s Point of Sale (POS).

Why Optical Touch Screen?

Optical touch guarantees Accuracy. Also it does not require frequent calibration. It efficiently senses the touch of bare fingers, fingers with gloves and even stylus. It does not require special drivers, means its plug and play ready. The organization working with digital signage love this technology as it suits almost perfect to their work.

Infrared Touch

Infrared has been around for some time but not in touch technology, With the PDA’s and Smartphones flowing in, the Big Giants went back to the invisible beam know popularly as Infrared for getting their touch in lines. Infrared touch works on beam interruption method. It has a frame surrounding the display which has light sources on one end and light detectors on the other hand. Both of these together create an optical grid across the screen. Now when the end user touches the screen the invisible beam is broken by the signal received by the photo sensors.

Why Infrared Touch Screen?

Inspite of being costly, the Infrared touch screen is accurate and can be trusted upon. The light emission is the maximum in Infrared Touch Screen.

Motion and Gesture Touch

With the advent of Gaming consoles’ technology, the humans feel like they are an integral part of the game. This experience is possible only because of the motion and Gesture Touch.

We normally wave hands for saying HI or Bye but who thought this waving might change screen on the computer, can hit the tennis ball in the gaming console.

The working of motion and gesture based touch screen is quite simple. It works basically on the movements of the object around the device. The object must be in a specific range of the device so that the device can understand the motion. Assume you are in front of the Gaming Console trying to play tennis…The instructor will tell you to stand at a particular place and then time your swings of the Racket on the ball. As you move; the screen and device captures your movements and replicate the same on the Console and execute the movement.

ACTION => CAPTURE=> REPLICATE=>EXECUTE

This technology has already arrived in smart phones where you just need to wave your hands side ways to turn a page in an ebook or just wave up and down to scroll the webpage. The hardware for the motion technology is just off the shelf component. The main worker is its software that actually initiates the working.

Why should one use Motion and Gesture based touch screen???

Firstly it does not require much training to learn, how these screens work. Even finest of movements are recognized by the screen. Another advantage is that most of the Operating Systems support such screens. So far it is considered as the best technology for Gaming Consoles.

In the near future, such touch screens are expected to be an integral part of Gadgets like

Digital Signage

Point of Sale (POS)

Computing Devices like Tablets, Thin Clients etc.