'Touch Tomorrow's' technologies

Touch technology is about using your fingers, or some other pointer, to view and manipulate information on a screen. On a conventional system, with every mouse click, the OS registers a mouse event. With a touch-screen system, every time your finger touches the screen, a touch event is registered. Before we get into how it works, let’s look at the uses of this technology.

Touch technology is most effective where there’s no time to learn how to operate a PC using a mouse and keyboard. In a fast-paced restaurant, for example, customers can place their orders on a touch-screen-enabled machine. ATM outlets, information counters airports, public-information systems, customer self-service counters, tradeshow displays, electronic catalogs and computerized gaming are other areas deploying touch technology.

A basic touch-screen system

A basic touch-screen system is made up of three components: a touch sensor, controller, and software driver. The sensor is a clear panel, which when touched, registers a voltage change that is sent to the controller. The controller processes this signal and passes the touch event data to the PC through a bus interface, be it a bus-card, serial, or USB. The software driver takes this data and translates the touch events into mouse events.

A touch-screen sensor can use one of five mechanisms: resistance, capacitance, acoustics, optics and mechanical force. Understanding these will help you match the technology to your application. Some factors that would affect the choice of sensors are roughness of handling, resolution, precision of touch, activation force, response time, type of stylus used and touch life.

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