TOUCH SCREEEN

A touchscreen is an electronic visual display that can detect the presence and
location of a touch within the display area. The term generally refers to touching the
display of the device with a finger or hand. Touchscreens can also sense other
passive objects, such as a stylus. Touchscreens are common in devices such as
game consoles, all-in-one computers, tablet computers, and smartphones.
The touchscreen has two main attributes. First, it enables one to interact directly
with what is displayed, rather than indirectly with a pointer controlled by a mouse or
touchpad. Secondly, it lets one do so without requiring any intermediate device that
would need to be held in the hand (other than a stylus, which is optional for most
modern touchscreens). Such displays can be attached to computers, or to networks
as terminals. They also play a prominent role in the design of digital appliances such
as the personal digital assistant (PDA), satellite navigation devices, mobile phones,
and video games.
The popularity of smartphones, tablet computers and many types of information
appliances is driving the demand and acceptance of common touchscreens, for
portable and functional electronics. With a display of a simple smooth surface, and
direct interaction without any hardware (keyboard or mouse) between the user and
content, fewer accessories are required. Touchscreens are popular in the medical
field, and in heavy industry, as well as kiosks such as museum displays or room
automation, where keyboard and mouse systems do not allow a suitably intuitive,
rapid, or accurate interaction by the user with the display's content.
Historically, the touchscreen sensor and its accompanying controller-based firmware
have been made available by a wide array of after-market system integrators, and
not by display, chip, or motherboard manufacturers. Display manufacturers and chip
manufacturers worldwide have acknowledged the trend toward acceptance of
touchscreens as a highly desirable user interface component and have begun to
integrate touchscreens into the fundamental design of their products.

HISTORY
A capacitive touch screen was developed by American inventor G Samuel Hurst and
the first version produced in 1982. Another inventor E.A. Johnson briefly described
his work on the topic in a short article published in 1965 and then more fullyalong
with photographs and diagramsin an article published in 1967. A description of
the applicability of the touch technology for air traffic control was described in an

article published in 1968. Engineer Bent Stumpe of CERN developed a transparent

touch screen in the early 1970s and it was manufactured by CERN and put to use in
1973.
From 19791985, the Fairlight CMI (and Fairlight CMI IIx) was a high-end musical
sampling and re-synthesis workstation that utilized light pen technology, with which
the user could allocate and manipulate sample and synthesis data, as well as
access different menus within its OS by touching the screen with the light pen. The
later Fairlight series IIT models used a graphics tablet in place of the light pen. The
HP-150 from 1983 was one of the world's earliest commercial touchscreen
computers. Similar to the PLATO IV system, the touch technology used employed
infrared transmitters and receivers mounted around the bezel of its 9" Sony
Cathode Ray Tube (CRT), which detected the position of any non-transparent object
on the screen.
An early attempt at a handheld game console with touchscreen controls was Sega's
intended successor to the Game Gear, though the device was ultimately shelved
and never released due to the expensive cost of touchscreen technology in the
early 1990s. Touchscreens would not be popularly used for video games until the
release of the Nintendo DS in 2004. Until recently, most consumer touchscreens
could only sense one point of contact at a time, and few have had the capability to
sense how hard one is touching. This has changed with the commercialization of
multi-touch technology.

TYPES
There are a variety of touchscreen technologies that have different methods of
sensing touch.

Resistive :
In electrical engineering, resistive touchscreens are touch-sensitive computer
displays composed of two flexible sheets coated with a resistive material and
separated by an air gap or microdots. There are two different types of metallic
layers. The first type is called Matrix, in which striped electrodes on substrates such
as glass or plastic face each other. The second type is called Analogue which
consists of transparent electrodes without any patterning facing each other. As of
2011 analogue offered lowered production costs. When contact is made to the
surface of the touchscreen, the two sheets are pressed together. On these two
sheets there are horizontal and vertical lines that, when pushed together, register
the precise location of the touch. Because the touchscreen senses input from

contact with nearly any object (finger, stylus/pen, palm) resistive touchscreens are a
type of "passive" technology.
For example, during operation of a four-wire touchscreen, a uniform, unidirectional
voltage gradient is applied to the first sheet. When the two sheets are pressed
together, the second sheet measures the voltage as distance along the first sheet,
providing the X coordinate. When this contact coordinate has been acquired, the
uniform voltage gradient is applied to the second sheet to ascertain the Y
coordinate. These operations occur within a few milliseconds, registering the exact
touch location as contact is made.
Resistive touchscreens typically have high resolution (4096 x 4096 DPI or higher),
providing accurate touch control. Because the touchscreen responds to pressure on
its surface, contact can be made with a finger or any other pointing device.
Resistive touchscreen technology works well with almost any stylus-like object, and
can also be operated with gloved fingers and bare fingers alike. In some
circumstances, this is more desirable than a capacitive touchscreen, which has to
be operated with a capacitive pointer, such as a bare finger (latest capacitive
technology enables gloves on touchscreens). The costs are relatively low when
compared with active touchscreen technologies.[citation needed] Resistive
touchscreen technology can be made to support multi-touch input
For people who must grip the active portion of the screen or must set their entire
hand down on the screen, alternative touchscreen technologies are available, such
as active touchscreen in which only the stylus creates input and skin touches are
rejected. However, newer touchscreen technologies allow the use of multi-touch
without the aforementioned vectoring issues.
A resistive touchscreen panel comprises several layers, the most important of which
are two thin, transparent electrically-resistive layers separated by a thin space.
These layers face each other, with a thin gap between. One resistive layer is a
coating on the underside of the top surface of the screen. Just beneath it is a similar
resistive layer on top of its substrate. One layer has conductive connections along
its sides, the other along top and bottom. A voltage is passed through one layer,
and sensed at the other. When an object, such as a fingertip or stylus tip, presses
down on the outer surface, the two layers touch to become connected at that point:
The panel then behaves as a pair of voltage dividers, one axis at a time. By rapidly
switching between each layer, the position of a pressure on the screen can be read.
Resistive touch is used in restaurants, factories and hospitals due to its high
resistance to liquids and contaminants. A major benefit of resistive touch
technology is its low cost. Disadvantages include the need to press down, and a risk
of damage by sharp objects. Resistive touchscreens also suffer from poorer
contrast, due to having additional reflections from the extra layer of material placed
over the screen.

Capacitive :
In electrical engineering, capacitive sensing is a technology based on capacitive
coupling that is used in many different types of sensors, including those to detect
and measure proximity, position or displacement, humidity, fluid level, and
acceleration. Capacitive sensing as a human interface device (HID) technology, for
example to replace the computer mouse, is growing increasingly popular. Capacitive
touch sensors are used in many devices such as laptop trackpads, digital audio
players, computer displays, mobile phones, mobile devices, tablets and others.
More and more design engineers are selecting capacitive sensors for their
versatility, reliability and robustness, unique human-device interface and cost
reduction over mechanical switches.
Capacitive sensors detect anything that is conductive or has a dielectric different
than that of air. While capacitive sensing applications can replace mechanical
buttons with capacitive alternatives, other technologies such as multi-touch and
gesture-based touchscreens are also premised on capacitive sensing.

Sensor design
Capacitive sensors can be constructed from many different media, such as copper,
Indium tin oxide (ITO) and printed ink. Copper capacitive sensors can be
implemented on standard FR4 PCBs as well as on flexible material. ITO allows the
capacitive sensor to be up to 90% transparent (for one layer solutions, such as
touch phone screens). Size and spacing of the capacitive sensor are both very
important to the sensor's performance. In addition to the size of the sensor, and its
spacing relative to the ground plane, the type of ground plane used is very
important. Since the parasitic capacitance of the sensor is related to the electric
field's (e-field) path to ground, it is important to choose a ground plane that limits
the concentration of e-field lines with no conductive object present.
Designing a capacitance sensing system requires first picking the type of sensing
material (FR4, Flex, ITO, etc.). One also needs to understand the environment the
device will operate in, such as the full operating temperature range, what radio
frequencies are present and how the user will interact with the interface.
There are two types of capacitive sensing system: mutual capacitance, where the
object (finger, conductive stylus) alters the mutual coupling between row and
column electrodes, which are scanned sequentially; and self- or absolute
capacitance where the object (such as a finger) loads the sensor or increases the

parasitic capacitance to ground. In both cases, the difference of a preceding

absolute position from the present absolute position yields the relative motion of
the object or finger during that time. The technologies are elaborated in the
following section.

Surface capacitance
In this basic technology, only one side of the insulator is coated with conductive
material. A small voltage is applied to this layer, resulting in a uniform electrostatic
field. When a conductor, such as a human finger, touches the uncoated surface, a
capacitor is dynamically formed. Due to the sheet resistance of the surface, each
corner is measured to have a different effective capacitance[citation needed]. The
sensor's controller can determine the location of the touch indirectly from the
change in the capacitance as measured from the four corners of the panel: the
larger the change in capacitance, the closer the touch is to that corner. With no
moving parts, it is moderately durable, but has low resolution, is prone to false
signals from parasitic capacitive coupling, and needs calibration during
manufacture. Therefore, it is most often used in simple applications such as
industrial controls and kiosks.

Projected capacitance
Projected capacitive touch (PCT) technology is a capacitive technology which allows
more accurate and flexible operation, by etching the conductive layer. An X-Y grid is
formed either by etching one layer to form a grid pattern of electrodes, or by
etching two separate, perpendicular layers of conductive material with parallel lines
or tracks to form the grid; comparable to the pixel grid found in many liquid crystal
displays (LCD).

The greater resolution of PCT allows operation with no direct contact, such that the
conducting layers can be coated with further protective insulating layers, and
operates even under screen protectors, or behind weather and vandal-proof glass.
Due to the top layer of a PCT being glass, PCT is a more robust solution versus
resistive touch technology. Depending on the implementation, an active or passive
stylus can be used instead of or in addition to a finger. This is common with point of
sale devices that require signature capture. Gloved fingers may or may not be
sensed, depending on the implementation and gain settings. Conductive smudges
and similar interference on the panel surface can interfere with the performance.
Such conductive smudges come mostly from sticky or sweaty finger tips, especially

in high humidity environments. Collected dust, which adheres to the screen due to
the moisture from fingertips, can also be a problem. There are two types of PCT:
self-capacitance, and mutual capacitance.

Mutual capacitance
Mutual capacitive sensors have a capacitor at each intersection of each row and
each column. A 12-by-16 array, for example, would have 192 independent
capacitors. A voltage is applied to the rows or columns. Bringing a finger or
conductive stylus near the surface of the sensor changes the local electric field
which reduces the mutual capacitance. The capacitance change at every individual
point on the grid can be measured to accurately determine the touch location by
measuring the voltage in the other axis. Mutual capacitance allows multi-touch
operation where multiple fingers, palms or styli can be accurately tracked at the
same time.

Self-capacitance
Self-capacitance sensors can have the same X-Y grid as mutual capacitance sensors,
but the columns and rows operate independently. With self-capacitance, current
senses the capacitive load of a finger on each column or row. This produces a
stronger signal than mutual capacitance sensing, but it is unable to resolve
accurately more than one finger, which results in "ghosting", or misplaced location
sensing.

Circuit design
Capacitance is typically measured indirectly, by using it to control the frequency of
an oscillator, or to vary the level of coupling (or attenuation) of an AC signal.
The design of a simple capacitance meter is often based on a relaxation oscillator.
The capacitance to be sensed forms a portion of the oscillator's RC circuit or LC
circuit. Basically the technique works by charging the unknown capacitance with a
known current. (The equation of state for a capacitor is i = C dv/dt. This means that
the capacitance equals the current divided by the rate of change of voltage across
the capacitor.) The capacitance can be calculated by measuring the charging time
required to reach the threshold voltage (of the relaxation oscillator), or equivalently,
by measuring the oscillator's frequency. Both of these are proportional to the RC (or
LC) time constant of the oscillator circuit.

The primary source of error in capacitance measurements is stray capacitance,

which if not guarded against, may fluctuate between roughly 10 pF and 10 nF. The
stray capacitance can be held relatively constant by shielding the (high impedance)
capacitance signal and then connecting the shield to low impedance) ground
reference. Also, to minimize the unwanted effects of stray capacitance, it is good
practice to locate the sensing electronics as near the sensor electrodes as possible.
Another measurement technique is to apply a fixed-frequency AC-voltage signal
across a capacitive divider. This consists of two capacitors in series, one of a known
value and the other of an unknown value. An output signal is then taken from across
one of the capacitors. The value of the unknown capacitor can be found from the
ratio of capacitances, which equals the ratio of the output/input signal amplitudes,
as could be measured by an AC voltmeter. More accurate instruments may use a
capacitance bridge configuration, similar to a Wheatstone bridge. The capacitance
bridge helps to compensate for any variability that may exist in the applied signal.

Comparison with other touchscreen technologies

Since capacitive screens respond to only materials which are conductive (human
finger used most commonly), they can be cleaned with cloths with no accidental
command input. Capacitive touchscreens are more responsive than resistive
touchscreens.
A standard stylus cannot be used for capacitive sensing unless it is tipped with
some form of conductive material, such as anti-static conductive foam. However,
capacitive stylidifferent from standard stylican be used as well as finger input on
capacitive screens. Capacitive touchscreens are more expensive to manufacture
and offer a significantly lesser degree of accuracy than resistive touchscreens.
Some cannot be used with gloves, and can fail to sense correctly with even a small
amount of water on the screen.
Power supplies with high electronic noise can reduce accuracy.

Capacitive stylus
A Capacitive stylus is a special type of stylus that works on capacitive touchscreens
primarily designed for fingers, as on smartphones and tablets. They are different
from standard styli designed for resistive touchscreens.
According to a report by ABI Research, styli are especially needed in China for
handwriting recognition because of the nature of its writing system.

Infrared :
An infrared touchscreen uses an array of X-Y infrared LED and photodetector pairs
around the edges of the screen to detect a disruption in the pattern of LED beams.
These LED beams cross each other in vertical and horizontal patterns. This helps the
sensors pick up the exact location of the touch. A major benefit of such a system is
that it can detect essentially any input including a finger, gloved finger, stylus or
pen. It is generally used in outdoor applications and point of sale systems which
can't rely on a conductor (such as a bare finger) to activate the touchscreen. Unlike
capacitive touchscreens, infrared touchscreens do not require any patterning on the
glass which increases durability and optical clarity of the overall system. Infrared
touchscreens are sensitive to dirt / dust that can interfere with the IR beams. It
suffers from parallax in curved surfaces and accidental press when the user hovers
his/her finger over the screen while searching for the item to be selected.

SAW Touch Screen Technology :

In this system, introduced by Tyco International's Elo division in 2006, the key to the
invention is that a touch at each position on the glass generates a unique sound.
Four tiny transducers attached to the edges of the touchscreen glass pick up the
sound of the touch. The sound is then digitized by the controller and compared to a
list of prerecorded sounds for every position on the glass. The cursor position is
instantly updated to the touch location. APR is designed to ignore extraneous and
ambient sounds, since they do not match a stored sound profile. APR differs from
other attempts to recognize the position of touch with transducers or microphones,
in using a simple table lookup method rather than requiring powerful and expensive
signal processing hardware to attempt to calculate the touch location without any
references.[17] The touchscreen itself is made of ordinary glass, giving it good
durability and optical clarity. It is usually able to function with scratches and dust on
the screen with good accuracy. The technology is also well suited to displays that
are physically larger. Similar to the Dispersive Signal Technology system, after the
initial touch, a motionless finger cannot be detected. However, for the same reason,
the touch recognition is not disrupted by any resting objects.
Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) touch screen technology is based on sending acoustic
waves across a clear glass panel with a series of transducers and reflectors. When a
finger touches the screen, the waves are absorbed, causing a touch event to be
detected at that point.
Like infrared technology, the panel is all glass, so there are no layers that can be
worn, or damaged over time. This makes SAW touch screen technology highly
durable and suitable for applications where high clarity is desired.

SAW touch screen technology is recommended for public information kiosks and
other high traffic indoor environments.
In Australia SAW technology is usually one of the more expensive technologies.
Since there are few applications where it is superior to infrared, infrared is more
often the recommended solution where high durability and screen clarity is
required.
Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) Touch Screens from Densitron offer the perfect
solution for the most demanding applications By using inaudible acoustic waves on
a glass plate. When an operator touches the screen, a portion of the energy is
absorbed. The reduced energy is detected by the X and Y sensors and the X and Y
coordinate location is registered. Optimized for an accurate, sensitive and quick
touch performance when coupled with a Densitron SAW Touch Screens controller as
well as our user friendly utilities.