The Future of Multi-Sensing
August 13, 2012, Display Search Emerging Display Technology Conference, Santa Clara, CA—Doug Young from Neonode talked about the changing landscape for sensors, and the requirements for next-generation systems.
Design and intellectual property as well as industrial design are becoming the drivers for new consumer products. As a part of the changes, the inclusion of multiple sensors into the systems is also driving for higher-performance sensors that can work together. Now, sensors need resolution approaching 300dpi, 1mm location accuracy, and 1-2ms latency.
They have tried to understand this interrelationship and filed for a gestures patent back in ’02. Their patent was finally issues earlier this year. Now the trends are for lower costs, higher precision, and more senses or degrees of freedom. The always-on operating profile requires careful power management and low-power operation. Multi-sensing will include pressure, proximity, hovering, 3-D and many more functions.
All of the objects and sensors will need to be multi-touch capable, but it is not necessary to have a display to use all of the sensor capabilities. For example, the built a scanner with TI that used LEDs on 10mm centers with special lenses to manage the light and sensor arrays. They had to integrate the analog-digital front end to get the desired performance. They achieved less than 2ms latency in the apps processor with a 1,000 frames per second scan. The unit draws 10?W in standby mode.
Multi-sensing requires that something always be on to detect a trigger event, which is used to power up the rest of the system components. They place detectors in a 0.4 mm bezel above the screen to perform proximity detection of anything within 30cm. the nice thing is that the detector array is needed for other functions, so the new function is available for no additional costs, just more software.
