Extreme touch: the new frontier for touch applications

When you think about touch applications those that come immediately to mind are education, where interactivity has seen early adoption, collaboration and today, probably, retail, although universal adoption is still a long way off. Gary Conner, sales director for distributor Square I Products, believes that the intrinsic benefits of touch commend it to many applications which are yet to develop:
“More and more touch devices are becoming commonplace in everyday life. Phones, screens and ticketing systems all use touch technology every day. It seems that the limits to touch technology could be just our imagination over the coming years.”
“Clearly the education market has already benefitted from the technology but is in the corporate and commercial sector where the new developments will come.”
“Touchscreen technology is already cutting costs and assisting shoppers in the retail space where there are considerable opportunities for interactive solutions that can enhance or improve the customer experience. In the corporate sector it is still more important to demonstrate the business benefits and cost cutting advantages of using technology to aid collaborative working. Adding touch enhances the user experience and often simplifies usage – but only when it is part of a larger strategy.”
“The key point in all sectors is still to fully understand what the customer is looking to gain from the new technology. Once this is understood, finding the correct solution for them is simple. As an experienced touch technology distributor with a wide range of products and services Square 1 Products are able to work closely with our resellers and their customers to ensure that the right solution is chosen and the ROI can be clearly demonstrated.”
Touch points
In the beginning there was single touch, then dual and currently six touch points is the benchmark for education and general business collaboration. Emerging applications demand more, to support more current users or more simultaneous sources. Shopping, for example, is now a social activity with consumers hunting in packs. Christian Jeske, Marketing Director, Pyramid Computer, calls them the ‘constantly connected consumer’. He says that the addition of touchscreens to the sales floor can have an immediate effect on profitability: “Nephele and polytouch can help retailers of any size to increase turnover by 20-40 per cent simply by offering consumers improved product choice, payment and collection options at the point-of-sale and creating a total new dimension of shopping.”
Pyramid’s Nephele is a cloud-based e-commerce solution that integrates with retailers’ existing IT systems. It is also optimised for devices such as smartphones, tablets and kiosks and is app ready for iOS and Android. Retailers can expand their omnichannel capabilities using virtual shelf extensions. This not only creates a new shopping dimension for customers but also helps retailers gather statistics about customer shopping habits.
Polytouch hardware uses projected capacitive (PCAP) touch technology and are capable of tracking 20 simultaneous touches and gestures. Software applications for retail include Face Cake, a fashion accessory and makeup selector. An integrated camera allows the shopper to try clothes on and experiment with makeup colours, sunglasses, scarves and a range of other items, and then take a picture to share with friends. The quality of the touch response is guaranteed to produce at least 10 per cent less interrupted purchases than other touch devices, improving ROI.
At ISE 2014, Pyramid introduced a 46” polytouch self-service table for retail banking environments and a new multi-touch terminal equipped with switchable privacy filter technology. The latter is a technology for retail banking and enables normal touch screens to be modified into PIN Pads. These offer a standard (public) viewing mode with no viewing obstruction, and a privacy mode in which only one user, standing in front of the screen, can see the confidential information.
Touch omnipresence
So prevalent is touch these days that it has encouraged developers to move outside the professional arena and into consumer. Touch pioneer FlatFrog has seen its technology adopted by manufacturers of all-in-one PCs, Ultrabooks and monitors. Supporting up to 40 simultaneous touches, FlatFrog’s patented Planar Scatter Detection (PSD) Touch technology detects changes in infrared light injected into the cover lens of the display.
As users touch the glass surface, scattered light is detected by multiple infrared receivers. PSD Touch works with any display type and with either a glass or plastic cover lens. Unlike projected capacitive touch technology (which is widely deployed today in smartphones and tablets) the system is said to provide full edge-to-edge industrial design with 100% optical clarity.
At the same time as exploring its options in the consumer market FlatFrog has launched touch screens in sizes up to 65”. The new range features an ultra thin edge-to-edge design – said to be ideal for large screen tablet PCs as well as interactive whiteboards and table computers. The bigger formats complement FlatFrog’s current portfolio of touch screens for PC, in 10” – 30” sizes.
Full interaction
While solutions from Pyramid and FlatFrog are ideal for small groups of shoppers sharing a cosmetic makeover, new applications as diverse as retail, transportation, events and even education that demand a much larger interactive surface. The MultiTaction iWall from Multitouch Ltd, launched at ISE 2014, is claimed to be among the largest currently in service, at 5 metres wide x 2.5 metres tall. This turnkey interactive videowall solution comprises 12, 55” ultra-thin bezel MultiTaction displays with 24 megapixel resolution.
The iWall is said to offer unlimited simultaneous touch, IR pen and object recognition and 200 fps tracking. Available for use by any number of concurrent users, this is probably the one for the station concourse or airport check-in area:
“MultiTaction iWall is the new standard for interactive walls in corporate and public spaces”, explained Hannu Anttila, vice president of business development at MultiTouch. “As a turnkey solution it is easy to specify and deploy, and MultiTaction’s world-leading technology ensures that no other interactive wall comes close.”
MultiTaction’s iWall ships with an aluminium mounting and cooling structure, with side plates and hidden access door, a server-class computer, internal cabling and LAN switch, a speaker system, onsite installation and training. The iWall recognises finger touches, complete hands, infrared pens and objects. Technische Universität Dresden has installed an iWall for research purposes, and is already convinced about its potential:
“We expect large interactive displays to be omnipresent in the future,” forecast Professor Raimund Dachselt, head of the Interactive Media Lab at TU Dresden. ”The MultiTaction iWall provides us a 25 megapixel display supporting the widest range of input methods and unlimited touch points. The MultiTaction technology is the only one worldwide to support this variety of interaction modalities at this size. That’s why we want to be the first lab with this equipment to do groundbreaking research in this area.”
“Besides conducting basic research in human-computer interaction, we work on interactive visualisations,” continued Professor Dachselt. “TU Dresden applies this research. This means, we try to find perception-oriented techniques that can effectively handle big data on a big display wall for several users in fields such as cell or systems biology, computerisation of traditional industries such as manufacturing press and publishing sector, media management and other areas. The Interactive Media Lab aims to demonstrate this technology to small and medium-sized companies with need for interactive big data visualisation.”
Touch development
If a five metre wide touch screen with unlimited touch points is a little over the top for you application, Multitouch Ltd has announced a 4K, 84-inch interactive display with fast response times, simultaneous pen and touch support, and, again, the ability to track unlimited touch points simultaneously with hands, fingers and objects. The extra quality available with the 4K resolution makes the product suitable for suitable for flagship installations, productivity applications, high-end presentations, and demanding professional applications.
And it is in these applications where effort needs to be applied in proportion to the advances in the technology of touch. 3M Touch Systems has taken something of a lead here with an initiative which helps 3M customers find multi-touch software developers and solutions for maximising the interactive capabilities of 3M’s hardware. The 3M Multi-Touch Developer Network is designed to make the connection between 3M’s customers and multi-touch application developers whose software development capabilities showcase what is possible using 3M’s 60 touch point technology.
3M’s Diego Romeu, Global Business Manager, Electronic Solutions Division, explained: “Our customers continue to seek out high-quality multi-touch software solutions to assist them in achieving their customer engagement goals through interactive technologies. But because the application possibilities are virtually endless, 3M strives to help customers find qualified developers who can harness the capabilities of our high-performance multitouch technology and turn our customers vision into reality.”
The 3M Multi-Touch Developer Network helps match the customer’s market and application need with qualified developers experienced in these key markets: Tradeshow and Exhibits; Hospitality and Travel; Government; Retail; Corporate; Financial; Media and Entertainment; and Healthcare. Each multitouch developer is featured on a web site, including an overview of their multitouch software capabilities and videos featuring their applications in action.