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TOUCH SCREEN TECHNOLOGY

Introduction
Call it an effort of human mind or a miracle from human heart. But this is all happening with technology. We land in an era where everything that can be possibly thought, can also be practically put into. And that too quite reasonably..!! Just move the hand or walk your fingers over a thing and it works. Yes, it is the interactive gesture based technology I am talking about.

What is Touch Screen Technology? Touchscreen technology is the direct manipulation type gesture based technology. Direct manipulation is the ability to manipulate digital world inside a screen without the use of command-line-commands. A device which works on touchscreen technology is coined as Touchscreen. A touchscreen is an electronic visual display capable of detecting and effectively locating a touch over its display area. It is sensitive to the touch of a human finger, hand, pointed finger nail and passive objects like stylus. Users can simply move things on the screen, scroll them, make them bigger and many more. Hailing the History..!! The first ever touchscreen was developed by E.A Johnson at the Royal Radar Establishment, Malvern, UK in the late 1960s. Evidently, the first touchscreen was a capacitive type; the one widely used in smart phones nowadays. In 1971, a milestone to touchscreen technology was developed by Doctor Sam Hurst, an instructor at the University of Kentucky Research Foundation. It was a touch sensor named Elograph. Later in 1974, Hurst in association with his company Elographics came up with the first real touchscreen featuring a transparent surface. In 1977, Elographics developed and patented a resistive touchscreen technology, one of the most popular touchscreen technologies in use today.

2 Ever since then, touchscreen displays are widely used in computers, user interactive machines, public kiosks, point of sale applications, gaming consoles, PDAs, smartphones, tablets, etc.

COMPONENTS OF SYSTEM
Bezel/ Front panel Touch screen Liquid Crystal Display Controller Software Types of Touchscreen Technology Let us now give an engineers eye to this revolutionary technology. A touchscreen is a 2 dimensional sensing device made of 2 sheets of material separated by spacers. There are four main touchscreen technologies: 1) Resistive 2) Capacitive 3) Surface Acoustic Wave 4) Infrared 1. Resistive Touchscreen Technology The resistive touchscreen consists of a flexible top layer made of Polyethylene (PET) and a rigid bottom layer made of glass. Both the layers are coated with a conducting compound called Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) and then spaced with spacers. While the monitor is operational, an electric current flows between the two layers. When a touch is made, the flexible screen presses down and touches the bottom layer. A change in electrical current is hence detected and the coordinates of the point of touch is calculated by the controller and parsed into readable signals for the operating system to react accordingly.

Some of the popular devices that use Resistive Touchscreen are Nintendo DS, Nokia N97, HTC Touch Pro2, HTC Tattoo, Sony Ericsson Satio, etc. These systems transmit only 75% of light from the monitor. The resistive touchscreen is further divided into 4-, 5-, 6-, 7- and 8-wired resistive touchscreen. While the constructive design of all these modules is similar there is a major distinction in each of its method to determine the coordinates of touch. The Four-wire Resistive Touchscreen uses both the layers to calculate the axes information of the touch. Touch measurement in the 4-wire is a 2 step process. The x-coordinate of the touch point is calculated by creating a voltage gradient on the flexible layer, and the y-coordinate is determined by creating a voltage gradient along the bottom layer. Pros and Cons: Consequently, the 4-wire resistive touchscreen is less durable, feebly accurate and can drift with environmental changes. However these negatives are divulged only with large-sized touchscreen. These are relatively cheap, easily available and consume low power. The Eight-wire Resistive Touchscreen is simply a variation of the 4-wire one with the addition of 4 sense wires, two for each layer. The sensing points aid in reducing the environmental drift to increase the stability of the system. The 8-wire systems are employed in sizes of 10.4 or larger where the drift can be significant. The Five-wire Resistive Touchscreen do not uses the coversheet (flexible layer) in determining the touch coordinate. All the position sensing is employed on the stable glass layer. In this design, one wire goes to the coversheet and four wires are deployed to the four corners of the bottom sheet. The coversheet only

4 acts as a voltage measuring probe. The functioning of the touchscreen remains unscathed even with changes in the uniformity of the conductive coating over the coversheet. Pros and Cons: Highly durable, accurate and reliable. This technology involves complex electronics and is expensive. However, it can be used in sizes upto 22. The Six and Seven wire resistive touchscreen is also a variant to the 5 and 4 wire technology respectively. In the 6-wire resistive touchscreen an extra ground layer is added behind the glass plate which is said to improve systems performance. While, the sevenwire variant has two sense lines on the bottom plate. However, these technologies are as prevalent as their counterparts. The Resistive Touchscreen works well with almost any stylus-like object. 2. Capacitive Touchscreen Technology The Capacitive Touchscreen Technology is the most popular and durable touchscreen technology used all over the world at most. It consists of a glass panel coated with a capacitive (conductive) material Indium Tin Oxide (ITO). The capacitive systems transmit almost 90% of light from the monitor. Some of the devices using capacitive touchscreen are Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Samsung Galaxy SII, Apples iPad. There are various capacitive technologies available as explained below. Surface-Capacitive screens, in this technique only one side of the insulator is coated with a conducting layer. While the monitor is operational, a uniform electrostatic field is formed over the conductive layer. Whenever, a human finger touches the screen, conduction of electric charges occurs over the uncoated layer which results in the formation of a dynamic capacitor. The computer or the controller then detects the position of touch by measuring the change in capacitance at the four corners of the screen. Pros and Cons: The surface capacitive touchscreen is moderately durable and needs calibration during manufacture. Since a conductive material is required to operate this screen, passive stylus cannot be used for surface capacitive touchscreen.

5 In the Projected-Capacitive Touchscreen Technology, the conductive ITO layer is etched to form a grid of multiple horizontal and vertical electrodes. It involves sensing along both the X and Y axis using clearly etched ITO pattern. 3. Surface Acoustic Wave Touchscreen technology The Surface Acoustic Wave Touchscreen technology contains two transducers (transmitting and receiving) placed along the X-axis and Y-axis of the monitors glass plate along with some reflectors. The waves propagate across the glass and are reflected back to the sensors. When the screen is touched, the waves are absorbed and a touch is detected at that point. These reflectors reflect all electrical signals sent from one transducer to another. This technology provides excellent throughput and image clarity. Pros and Cons: 100% clarity is obtained as no metallic layers are present on the screen, it can be operated using passive devices like stylus, glove or finger nail. Screen can get contaminated with much exposure to dirt, oil which may haunt its smooth functioning.

The projective screen contains a sensor at every intersection of the row and column, thereby increasing the accuracy of the system. There are two types of projected capacitive touchscreen: Mutual Capacitance and Self Capacitance

4. Infrared Touchscreen Technology In the Infrared Touchscreen Technology, an array of X- and Y- axes are fitted with pairs of IR Leds and photo detectors. The photo detectors detect any change in the pattern of light emitted by the Leds whenever the user touches the monitor/screen.

The starred assets..!! The potential novice touchscreen technology has many advantages over the conventional QWERTY keyboard and monitor. It is very flexible as opposed to its physical counterparts since the digital displays can be configured anytime at will of the user as per the functionalities. Touchscreen allows users to customize the interface for example alteration of language and size. By adjusting the size of the keyboard, user can utilize the spare area for display and other uses. With the decreasing size of computers and tablets these days, touchscreen is an added advantage. Multiple functions has to be performed on a small screen, touchscreen allows switching to a function at users will. For example, virtual keyboard which is an application of touchscreen is displayed on the screen only when the user allows it to be. However, there is also the other side of the coin where there some functionality which cannot be performed using a regular touchscreen like cut-and-paste, right click menu options, drop-down menus.

The Plural Touch Technology..!! The plural touch technology or the Multi touch is a variant of the touchscreen technology which can detect two or more touches over its display area at the same time. Some of the common functionalities that require multitouch interface are zooming in, zooming out, rotating objects, panning through a document, virtual keyboard, etc. Multi touch Applications technology are found in smart phones like iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, Nokia N8, Nexus S, Microsoft Touchtable, Apples iPad and many more. Apple iPhone: Multitouch now is a trademark by Apple who rightly proved it with a bang with the first most successful multitouch device ever; the iPhone. The first iPhone was unveiled on January 9, 2007.

7 iPhone is no less than a revolution in the touchscreen industry with its maestro functionalities and applications. It uses Mutual Capacitance Technology as its touchscreen. The capacitive touchscreen can only be operated by bare finger or multiple fingers for multi touch. Microsoft Surface: is a multi touch product from Microsoft that allows multiple users to manipulate digital content through surface computing. The main feature of this product is its Surfaces interface: Direct interaction, multi-touch contact, object recognition and multi-user experience. It is not based on and limited by the conventional touch technology. The surface utilizes Frustrated Total Internal Reflection and underneath projectors for its display operation. It is indeed a milestone in the multi-touch scenario. A touch screen is an assembly that is mounted in front of a video display. It is activated by touching, with a stylus or finger, the selected area on the display that indicates the desired function. The touch screen or frame has an independent X-Y coordinate system that is calibrated to the display matrix. The X-Y coordinates of the position of the stylus are communicated to the host computer causing the desired action. Other than voice recognition, touch input is probably the most natural human interface to any computing device. It is particularly useful and popular in those applications where the user is relatively unskilled in the operation of a computer. For that group of users, keyboards tend to be intimidating devices. Touch screens have been used for many years, mainly in applications such as point of sale, public information kiosks, industrial and process control, military displays, medical displays and interactive video systems. Touch Screens for the Factory Floor As computer based graphic displays and workstations replace switch and indicator banks as the primary man-machine interface for machine and process control, touch screens are becoming increasingly popular as the input device of choice There are several reasons for this increased popularity.

Using touch screens, pop-up alpha and numeric keypads replace fixed, expensive industrial keyboards. Since video switch banks are software programmable, making changes is significantly less costly than modifying a control panel that contains mechanical switches and indicators. Using touch input an unskilled user can operate a complex computing device by interacting directly with the video display with relative ease. Touch targets can be any shape size or color which makes screen design more flexible. Touch input can provide instant audio and/or visual feedback to tile user to confirm his choice. Touch active menus can help guide tile user through complex sequences of commands or actions. Complicated control panels can be simplified by only displaying valid options for any control

8 sequence. This guide is intended to provide a designer with basic tools and selection criteria to allow the most appropriate touch technology and controller configuration to be chosen for their industrial control application. Present Touch Technologies

Ideally a touch screen would have the following characteristics: It would not overlay the display and would, therefore, not degrade the display image. It would have resolution equivalent to that of the video display. It would be activated by 1) any size stylus 2) conducting or non-conducting styli or 3) a gloved or non-gloved finger. It would provide a positive, tactile feedback to the operator. It would be modular and capable of being added to a display and computer in the same manner that other input devices are added. It would be impervious to dust, grease, moisture chemical or oil vapors or pressure hose down that may be present in a hostile environment.

Unfortunately, none of the touch screens currently manufactured have all of those characteristics. Accordingly, the selection of any touch technology is a compromise that will depend on the particular application and environment. There are four major touch technologies--analog resistive, capacitive, scanning infrared (IR) and surface acoustic wave (SAW). All of these technologies provide an assembly consisting of a touch screen overlay or touch frame and a separate controller. The controller is a printed circuit board assembly that must be mounted in either the display device or the computer.

Analog Resistive Analog resistive screens consist of a sandwich of Mylar and plastic or glass. Usually the Mylar overlay is hard coated to resist abrasion. The two layers are separated from each other by transparent elastic

spacer dots. The inside surfaces of the sandwich are coated with a uniform transparent thin film conductive coating, usually indium-tin-oxide (ITO). In operation, a voltage is alternately applied along the horizontal and vertical axes. When the Mylar overlay is depressed and its conductive layer makes contact with the energized layer, that voltage is sensed and transmitted to a controller containing an analog-to-digital converter. The voltage is converted to a digital X or Y touch location. Although the basic analog resistive technology has infinite resolution, the actual system resolution is limited to the resolution of the A-D converter and is generally greater than 1,000x1,000 points. Capacitive A cross section of a capacitive screen is shown. A glass panel is coated with a conductive coating (usually ITO) that is fused into the glass. The coating is connected to four electrodes at the edges of the screen. Each electrode is connected to an oscillator circuit. When an operator touches the screen, the body capacitance of the operator causes a change in the impedance of the screen. The impedance change causes the oscillator frequencies to vary, and the frequency differentials are converted into X-Y coordinates by an A-D converter. As with the analog resistive screen, the basic capacitive screen has infinite resolution but the system resolution is limited by the signal-to-noise ratio which puts a practical upper limit on the A-D converter resolution--typically 1,000x 1,000 points. Scanning Infrared (IR) The IR technology is the only technology that does not overlay the display with an additional screen or screen sandwich. An array of infrared (IR) light emitting diode (LED)/photo detector pairs are mounted in a plastic frame. Using the IR spectrum allows ambient light to be filtered out and makes possible the use of opaque (to the visible spectrum) plastic

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frames to hide the photo devices. Thus, the array frame simply looks like a bezel. In operation, the LED/photo detector array is continuously and sequentially scanned horizontally and then vertically When an operator touches the display breaking one or more of the light beams, the X-Y position of the touch stylus is transmitted to the host computer. The maximum resolution using an interpolation technique is approximately double the number of LED/photo detector pairs in the array. Using interpolation, when an odd number of beams is broken along either axis, the X or Y coordinate of the center beam is transmitted, but when an even number of beams is broken, the coordinates of the interpolated beam are calculated and transmitted to the host computer. Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) The surface acoustic wave technology is the latest of the touch input technologies and uses inaudible acoustic wavestraveling over the surface of a glass panel at precise speeds in straight lines. X and Y transmitting transducers are located along the horizontal and vertical edges of a glass plate. Corresponding X and Y receiving transducers are located the opposite edges of the glass plate. A reflective array made of powdered glass is printed along the edges of the glass plate. The array consists of .2 mil thick by 1/2 inch wide diagonal, parallel lines. In operation, the transducer generates a surface acoustic wave which travels along the axis of the reflector array. At each reflector element, a small amount of the energy in the wave is deflected orthogonally to the direction of the wave, travels over the surface of the glass and is again deflected orthogonally toward the receiving transducer by a mirror image reflector. Since the energy in the wave is reduced as it travels the length of the reflective array, the reflector elements are placed increasingly closer together to compensate for the decreasing energy level. When an operator touches the screen, a portion of the energy is absorbed by the touch stylus. This reduced energy level is detected and, by comparing the speed of the received signal with the known speed of the SAW on glass, an X or Y coordinate location is registered. As with capacitive screens, the basic SAW technology has infinite resolution but is limited by the signal-to-noise ratio which puts a practical limit on the A-D converter--typically 900x900 coordinate locations.

Touch Screen Controllers

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Most manufacturers offer two controller configurations--USB and Serial-RS232.

Universal Serial Bus (USB) controllers are becoming more popular as system integrators upgrade to current equipment. Unfortunetly not all applications or older equipment support the USB standard. All of Nortech's products can be configured to operate on either of the controllers for complete versatility. Serial controllers are contained on a small printed circuit board and are usually mounted in the video monitor cabinet. They are then cabled to a standard RS232 serial port on the host computer.

Software Most touch screen manufacturers offer some level of software support which include mouse emulators, software drivers, screen generators and development tools for Windows, Mac and Linux. Most of the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software packages now available contain support for one or more touch technologies. Selection Process Generally there four factors that must must considered for any touch screen application:

The basic touch technology The touch controller configuration The screen surface treatment (not applicable to IR touch screens) Compatibility with the applications software

Touch Technology Evaluation Factors

Resolution-- The smallest detectable increment of stylus movement establishes the touch resolution. Low resolution may be adequate to activate large targets but for mouse tracking or small target activation, resolution equivalent to that of the monitor is desirable. Parallax-- If a significant variance exists between the target position on the LCD and the point on the touch screen matrix that, when activated by a stylus, causes a touch to be registered the operator could select a different target area than the desired target. Environment-- The buildup of a layer of dust, oil, grease or any foreign substance on fingers, harsh chemical vapors and hose-down by pressure hoses may cause improper touch operation. Stylus-- Types of styli typically used with touch screens are bare finger and gloved finger.

12 Occasionally other types of styli including pencil erasers, tips of a pen, may be pointed at the screen and the user expects a response Transmissivity-- Overlay touch screens act as a neutral density filter and, therefore attenuate the light from the LCD. Abrasion-- Touch screen abrasion is experienced in one of three ways. 1) Cleaning of screen with an abrasive 2) Impacting the screen with a sharp object 3) Gradual wearing of the screen from repeated use

Touch Technology Selection Criteria Analog Resistive Advantages

Highest resolution (better than 1 K x 1 K), smooth mouse tracking and small target activation Will operate with virtually any stylus including gloved/ungloved fingers Impervious to dust, oils, grease, moisture Touch has some tactile feedback

Disadvantages

Although Mylar overlay has a hard coat and is somewhat abrasion resistant, it can be damaged by gouging from a sharp instrument Hose down can cause unwanted activation of target areas Lowest transmissivity of all touch technologies - 55%-65%

Capacitive Advantages

High resolution - 1 K x 1 K, smooth mouse tracking and small target activation Impervious to dust, oils, grease, moisture Hose-down does not cause unwanted activation of targets Impervious to scratching by all but the hardest materials High transmissivity - >85%

Disadvantages

Will not respond to gloved finger or any non-conductive stylus

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Scanning Infrared (IR) Advantages

Best image quality as there is no overlay Impervious to scratching Activates with gloved or ungloved finger and any stylus that is large enough to break IR light beam (typically >.25")

Disadvantages

Low resolution May cause unintended activation of target prior to finger contact with LCD caused by IR light beam location above surface of LCD Pressure hose down may cause unwanted target selection Dust, oil or grease buildup on frame that impedes light beam may cause malfunction

Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) Advantages

High transmissivity - >92% High resolution - 900 x 900, smooth mouse tracking and small target activation Impervious to scratching by all but the hardest materials Only technology with Z axis control

Disadvantages

Pressure hose down may cause unwanted target selection Dust, oil or grease on surface of touch screen may cause malfunction or unwanted target selection

Surface Treatment Selection Criteria Two types of surface treatment are offered for most overlay screens - clear and anti-glare

Anti-glare screens use an etched surface to diffuse reflected light thus scattering specular reflected light and reducing glare. Unfortunately, this also causes some diffusion of the image.

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The diffusion is limited if the screen is close to the display surface, but some diffusion remains. Clear screens have no diffusion of the display image but the screen is highly reflective

Due to the highly reflective nature of the clear surface treatment, Nortech has chosen not to offer this option on its products. Software Compatibility After the touch screen technology and controller have been selected:

It is necessary to determine that the software drivers supplied with the touch screen are compatible with tile latest version of the user's operating system If standard application software is being considered. it is necessary to determine that the software is compatible with the drivers and touch hardware If software is being developed, it is necessary to ascertain that adequate software drivers and development tools are available.

Applications: Public Information Displays::: Tourism displays, Trade show display Customer Self-Services::: Stores, Restaurants, ATMs, Airline ticket terminals and Transportation hubs. Cont and automation Systems Cmptr based trg Assistive technology More uses... Digital jukeboxes, Computerized gaming, Student Registration systems, Multimedia softwares , Scientific applications etc., Summary

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We have shown that there are many factors to consider in the proper selection of a touch screen, primarily focused on the application and the environment in which it will be used. We have attempted to provide the designer with adequate information to make an informed choice of a touch screen technology that best suits the application. Nortech offers a complete line of touch input workstations, control stations and video monitors. Analog resistive and capacitive touch screens are offered as standard products, since one or the other will best satisfy most industrial control applications for use with LCDs. For generally clean environments, surface acoustic wave (SAW) touch screens may be substituted, if desirable. Nortech does not support scanning infrared (IR) touch screens for use with LCDs.