Product category:
Touchscreens and Touch Sensors
News Release from: Elo Touchsystems | Subject: APR technology
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 09 June 2006
Touch technology is sound alternative
Acoustic pulse recognition is a novel way of sensing touches on a display, using only a glass overlay and a small electronic controller board.
Newly developed by Elo TouchSystems, acoustic pulse recognition (APR) is a novel way of sensing touches on a display Comprising only a glass overlay mounted in front of the display, together with a small electronic controller board, Elo's APR technology provides a new set of benefits that have only partially been achieved before by other touch technologies
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 5 Dec 2000 at 8.00am (UK)
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The new, breakthrough APR touch technology was formally announced on 7th June 2006, at the Society for Information Display (SID) International Symposium, San Francisco, California with demonstrations of APR on Elo's popular 1529L 15in LCD desktop touchmonitors.
The 1529L touchmonitors will be available for purchase in September 2006 with APR included as an additional touch technology choice.
Elo is initially directing its APR touch technology towards the retail and restaurant POS markets.
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"Elo invented touch technology 35 years ago", says Elo President Mark Mendenhall, "and we've consistently continued innovating ever since".
"The new APR touch technology is one in a long line of products developed by Elo to meet the changing needs and demands of our customers".
"It provides seamless synergy of the best in touch".
"APR combines the ultimate in optical quality, durability and stability of surface wave and infra-red, with the excellent dragging properties of capacitive", explains Mendenhall.
"Plus, it has the advantages of resistive technology stylus, gloved hand and fingernail activation, and low cost".
APR works with water and other contaminants on the screen, is not affected by surrounding metal or poor grounding, can be scaled from PDA size to 42in displays, and provides palm rejection during signature capture.
According to Elo Product Manager David Chen, the new APR operates by listening for a touch.
"Simply stated", says Chen, "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 digitised by the controller and compared with a list of prerecorded sounds for every position on the glass".
"The cursor position is instantly updated to the touch location".
Chen explains that APR differs from previous attempts to recognise the position of touch with microphones because it uses a simple table lookup method instead of requiring powerful and expensive signal processing hardware to attempt to calculate the touch location without any references.
"Therefore", Chen confirms, "Elo's APR touch technology is more cost-effective and not economically limited to very large displays".
"Most importantly, it comes from the leader in acoustic touch technologies for the last 20 years, Elo TouchSystems".
"To create APR", says Steven Abramovich, Elo's Vice President of Sales and Marketing, "we placed all of the popular touch technologies capacitive, infrared, resistive and surface wave on the drawing board".
"Then we integrated the best features of each seamlessly into fully sealed, attractive POS monitors that herald just the beginning for this revolution in touch".
Abramovich sees APR technology as another example of his company's drive to remain customer-centric.
"We've always put the needs of the customer first", he states, "and we can attribute our success to responding to those needs".
"We created IntelliTouch surface wave 20 years ago because of customer demand for a new technology, and we developed APR for the very same reasons".
"Customers are looking for an economical solution that incorporates the best of everything".
"We provide that with APR.
It has the narrowest borders of any overlay touch technology a mere 5mm, including the sealing area".
"This makes it easy for multiple LC displays to be placed side by side".
Abramovich continues: "In addition, APR has a fixed co-ordinate system that is never subject to changes in time, position or environment".
"This means that traditional touchscreen calibration can be eliminated from the customer's application if the display size and position are fixed".
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