Fujitsu will demonstrate its new, dual-touch (2 point), 4-wire analog resistive touch panel controller at Display Week 2011 in Los Angeles. The new technology promises to expand the capabilities of, and applications for, 4-wire resistive touch panels, which are most commonly used in industrial and other major market applications.
Fujitsu’s latest development consists of a dual-touch (2-point) controller IC that supports USB and I2C interfaces, and offers Windows7 and Android drivers. This new development makes it possible for 4-wire resistive touch panels to accurately detect two simultaneous touch points, enabling the pinch, expand, rotate, and swipe/flick gestures that have been popularized by more costly, projected capacitive touch panels.
Last year, Fujitsu released Windows 7-certified Multi-Input (10 point) touch panels and controller ICs as series FID1530.
Resistive touch panels are suitable for many different applications because they accept a wide variety of input sources, including a pen, finger, stylus, glove or credit card edge. Adding the 2-point gesturing capability will bring new functionality and flexibility to touch-based medical devices, industrial equipment and controls, and mobile consumer devices, such as eReaders.
Typically, resistive touch panels detect positioning by measuring the voltage on the resistive films where the panel surface is pressed. If two or more points are pressed simultaneously, the detection circuit registers the mean value between those points and identifies it as a single position, making it impossible to accurately detect two or more separate points. Fujitsu’s new, proprietary technology is a hardware and firmware-based method, centered on the dual-touch controller IC and includes supporting electronics that detects two simultaneous touches.
The dual-touch controllers are currently sampling now. Volume production of the controllers and controller boards will begin in summer 2011.
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