Touch Screen Technology

_Madunuri Venkata Naga Pradeep _Midhun P.M. Abstract: Introduction: Definition, usage and primary advantage. History: Inventor, prototype and the challenges evolution to the modern day touch sensor. Prototype: Working and limitations. Technology: --Capacitive: Method of operation, difference with resistive. -Mutual -Self -Projected --Resistive: The working, advantages/disadvantages --Surface Acoustic Wave: Using sound waves --Infrared: Sensor grid -- Optical imaging -- Dispersive signal technology --Acoustic pulse recognition --Construction of touchscreen --Development -Controller: The importance and integration. -Calibration: How the touchscreen is adapted -Ergonomics and Usage: Challenges faced, finger stress, optimizing the working and response. -Conclusion BL.EN.U4CSE10094 BL.EN.U4CSE10088

Introduction: A touch screen 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. The touchscreen has two main attributes. First, it enables one to interact directly with what is displayed, rather than indirectly with a cursor 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. 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.

History: In 1971, the first "Touch Sensor" was developed by Doctor Sam Hurst (founder of Elographics) while he was an instructor at the University of Kentucky. This sensor, called the "Elograph," was patented by The University of Kentucky Research Foundation. The "Elograph" was not transparent like modern touch screens; however, it was a significant milestone in touch screen technology. In 1974, the first true touchscreen incorporating a transparent surface was developed by Sam Hurstand Elographics. In 1977, Elographics developed and patented five-wire resistive technology, the most popular touch screen technology in use today. Touchscreens first gained some visibility with the invention of the computer-assisted learning terminal, which came out in 1975 as part of the PLATO project. Touchscreens have subsequently become familiar in everyday life. Companies use touch screens for kiosk systems in retail and tourist settings, point of sale systems, ATMs, and PDAs, where a stylus is sometimes used to manipulate the GUI and to enter data. The popularity of smart phones, PDAs, portable game consoles and many types of information appliances is driving the demand for, and acceptance of, touchscreens. From 19791985, the Fairlight CMI (and Fairlight CMI IIx) was a highend musical sampling and re-synthesis is 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 III 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 computer. It did not have a touchscreen in the strict sense; instead, it had a 9" Sony Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) surrounded by infrared transmitters and receivers, which detected the position of any non-transparent object on the screen. 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 is starting to change with the commercialization of multi-touch technology. Touchscreens are popular in hospitality, 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 touchscreen functionality into the fundamental design of their products.

SENSOR TECHNOLOGY: Capacitive Touchscreens: A capacitive touchscreen panel is one which consists of an insulator such as glass, coated with a transparent conductor such as indium tin oxide (ITO). As the human body is also a conductor, touching the surface of the screen results in a distortion of the screen's electrostatic field, measurable as a change in capacitance. Different technologies may be used to determine the location of the touch. The location is then sent to the controller for processing.

Surface Capacitance: In this basic technology, only one side of the insulator is coated with a conductive layer. A small voltage is applied to the layer, resulting in a uniform electrostatic field. When a conductor, such as a human finger, touches the uncoated surface, a capacitor is dynamically formed. 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. As it has no moving parts, it is moderately durable but has limited resolution, is prone to false signals from parasitic capacitive coupling, and needs calibration during manufacture. It is therefore most often used in simple applications such as industrial controls and kiosks.

Projected capacitance: Projected Capacitive Touch (PCT) technology is a capacitive technology which permits more accurate and flexible operation, by etching the conductive layer. An XY grid is formed either by etching a single 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 LCD displays). The greater resolution of PCT allows operation without 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 finger tips can also be a problem. There are two types of PCT: Self Capacitance and Mutual Capacitance. Mutual Capacitance: In mutual capacitive sensors, there is a capacitor at every 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 close to the surface of the sensor changes the local electrostatic field which reduces the mutual capacitance. The capacitance change at every individual point on the grid can be measured to determine the touch location by measuring the voltage in the other axis. Mutual capacitance allows multi touch operation where multiple fingers, palms or stylus can be tracked simultaneously.

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, the capacitive load of a finger is measured on each column or row electrode by a current meter. This method produces a stronger signal than mutual capacitance, but it is unable to resolve accurately more than one finger, which results in "ghosting", or misplaced location sensing.

Resistive Touchscreen: A resistive touchscreen panel is composed of several layers, the most important of which are two thin, electrically conductive layers separated by a narrow gap. When an object, such as a finger, presses down on a point on the panel's outer surface the two metallic layers become connected at that point: the panel then behaves as a pair

of voltage dividers with connected outputs. This causes a change in the electrical current, which is registered as a touch event and sent to the controller for processing.

Analog touch screens supplied with LCDs are available in three types, 4-wire, 5-wire and 8-wire. Each type has advantages and disadvantages and is optimized for a specific type of application. Selecting the appropriate type will be discussed later in this paper. All analog touch screens consist of a ridged layer and a flexible layer with a separation layer between them. The flexible layer is exposed to the outside, towards the user. The inside surfaces of the ridged and flexible layers are coated with a resistive coating, usually ITO (indium tin oxide). When the flexible layer is pushed its conductive surface will make contact with the conductive surface of the ridged layer making an electrical connection between the two layers at the point of contact. Measurements are then made to determine the point of contact. The active layers of a 4-wire type touch screen consist of a partially conductive (resistive) coating applied uniformly to the panel. Conductive bus bars are screened with silver ink across opposing edges of the panel. The ridged and flexible panels are mounted with the bus bars perpendicular to each other. Measurements are made by applying a voltage gradient across one of the layers and measuring the voltage on the other layer. This measurement is made twice, once with the gradient across the ridged layer and the measurement taken from the flexible layer and again with the gradient applied to the flexible layer and the measurement taken from the ridged layer. The gradient is usually produced by grounding one bus bar and applying +5v to the other bus bar. This will produce a smooth voltage gradient in one axis across the panel. With a 4-wire touch screen two separate setups and measurements are required, one in the X-axis (left-right) and one in the Y-axis (up-down) to define the touch point. The actual switching of the 4 touch screen connections is done using an array of low on-resistance FET transistors and the voltage measurements are made with an A/D converter. The host micro controller controls both these elements. When a layer is being used as a sensitive layer all other connections to that layer must be left floating.

The resistance of the bus bars and the connection circuitry introduces an error (offset) in the voltage measurements. These offsets can also drift with changes in temperature, humidity and time. If the touch screen is to be used only with a finger the offsets will constitute a small percentage of the voltage represented by the large size of the finger and can be ignored. If, however, the touch screen is to be used with a stylus for drawing or signature capture then these offsets should be taken into account. This can be done by calibrating the screen periodically or by utilizing an 8wire touch screen.

8-wire touch screens compensate for drift by adding 4 additional reference lines. This allows the voltage to be measured directly at the touch screen bus bars. Note: you can use an 8-wire touch screen in 4-wire mode by connecting the drive and reference lines together. Use of this type of touch screen wont eliminate the need for an initial calibration of the touch screen but should eliminate the need for any subsequent calibrations. The simplest way to connect an 8- wire touch screen and take advantage of its benefits is to use a ratio-metric A/D converter supplying the reference voltages from the touch screen directly into the references of the A/D converter.

The 5-wire touch screen differs from the 4-wire type mainly in that the voltage gradient is applied only to one layer, the ridged layer, while the other layer is the sense layer for both measurements. The sequence of events during the measurements is this. The voltage gradient is set up on the x-axis and a voltage measurement is taken from the sensitive layer. The voltage gradient is then switched to the y-axis and another voltage measurement is taken from the same sense layer. The touch screen controller is responsible for: of the drive and sense voltage to the proper layer/axis the sense voltage to the A/D converter input the analog voltage from the sense layer into a digital word to the host processor Each of these tasks will be discussed separately. This stage is used to apply the drive voltage and ground to the proper layer (4 and 8wire) or axis (5- wire). This task is usually accomplished by a multiplexer in the case of the 4 and 8-wire types. The 5-wire type does not need a multiplexer since there is only one sense line.

The voltage level from the sense layer is then converted to a digital word by an analog to digital converter (ADC). The output of the ADC is then conditioned and perhaps latched by this element. It may also be converted to a serial stream if that is the type.

Surface acoustic wave: Surface acoustic wave (SAW) technology uses ultrasonic waves that pass over the touchscreen panel. When the panel is touched, a portion of the wave is absorbed. This change in the ultrasonic waves registers the position of the touch event and sends this information to the controller for processing. Surface wave touch screen panels can be damaged by outside elements. Contaminants on the surface can also interfere with the functionality of the touchscreen.

Infrared An infrared touchscreen uses an array of X-Y infrared LED and photo detector 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.

Optical imaging This is a relatively modern development in touchscreen technology, in which two or more image sensors are placed around the edges (mostly the corners) of the screen. Infrared back lights are placed in the camera's field of view on the other side of the screen. A touch shows up as a shadow and each pair of cameras can then be triangulated to locate the touch or even measure the size of the touching object (see visual hull). This technology is growing in popularity, due to its scalability, versatility, and affordability, especially for larger units.

Dispersive signal technology Introduced in 2002 by 3M, this system uses sensors to detect the mechanical energy in the glass that occurs due to a touch. Complex algorithms then interpret this information and provide the actual location of the touch. The technology claims to be unaffected by dust and other outside elements, including scratches. Since there is no need for additional elements on screen, it also claims to provide excellent optical clarity. Also, since mechanical vibrations are used to detect a touch event, any object can be used to generate these events, including fingers and stylus. A downside is that after the initial touch the system cannot detect a motionless finger.

Acoustic pulse recognition: This system, introduced by Tyco International's Elo division in 2006, uses piezoelectric transducers located at various positions around the screen to turn the mechanical energy of a touch (vibration) into an electronic signal. The screen hardware then uses an algorithm to determine the location of the touch based on the transducer signals. 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. As with 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.

Construction of a touch sensor There are several principal ways to build a touchscreen. The key goals are to recognize one or more fingers touching a display, to interpret the command that this represents, and to communicate the command to the appropriate application. In the most popular techniques, the capacitive or resistive approach, there are typically four layers;

1. Top polyester layer coated with a transparent metallic conductive coating on the bottom 2. Adhesive spacer 3. Glass layer coated with a transparent metallic conductive coating on the top 4. Adhesive layer on the backside of the glass for mounting.

When a user touches the surface, the system records the change in the electrical current that flows through the display. Dispersive-signal technology which 3M created in 2002, measures the piezoelectric effect the voltage generated when mechanical force is applied to a material that occurs chemically when a strengthened glass substrate is touched. There are two infrared-based approaches. In one, an array of sensors detects a finger touching or almost touching the display, thereby interrupting light beams projected over the screen. In the other, bottom-mounted infrared cameras record screen touches. In each case, the system determines the intended command based on the controls showing on the screen at the time and the location of the touch.

Development Most touchscreen technology patents were filed during the 1970s and 1980s and have expired. Touchscreen component manufacturing and product design are no longer encumbered by royalties or legalities with regard to patents and the use of touchscreen-enabled displays is widespread. The development of multipoint touchscreens facilitated the tracking of more than one finger on the screen; thus, operations that require more than one finger are possible. These devices also allow multiple users to interact with the touchscreen simultaneously.

With the growing use of touchscreens, the marginal cost of touchscreen technology is routinely absorbed into the products that incorporate it and is nearly eliminated. Touchscreens now have proven reliability. Thus, touchscreen displays are found today in airplanes, automobiles, gaming consoles, machine control systems, appliances, and handheld display devices including the multi-touch enabled iPhone; the touchscreen market for mobile devices is projected to produce US$5 billion in 2009. The ability to accurately point on the screen itself is also advancing with the emerging graphics tablet/screen hybrids.

TOUCH SCREEN CONTROLLER Design issues: There are some design issues to be considered as well as choices to be made in the design of the touch screen controller. These will be discussed next. ESD and noise. Electro Static Discharge (ESD) is not usually a problem since the flexible layer of the touch screen is a good dielectric. Noise can be an issue so some consideration should be paid to its elimination. The flexible cable connection from the touch screen should be routed well away from noise sources such as a CCFL or EL back light inverter. Noise suppression capacitors can be added between the touch screen connections and ground to suppress noise. Bit depth of the A/D converter. This choice is dictated mainly by the application. If the Touch screen is to be used as a human interface where the contact will be a finger then the resolution need not be very high. If the long dimension of the panel is 6 for example and the touch resolution is .2 (fine for a finger) then the A/D must resolve 30 points. 32 points can be represented in only 5 binary bits so this is sufficient for the A/D converter in this example. A sampling rate of 10 samples per second is enough for this application. In another example the application requires capturing a signature. The display is to draw the signature as it is traced on the touch screen. The display is to be a quarter VGA (320x240) LCD. In order to achieve the most accurate representation on the display of the users signature the touch screen should have a resolution that at least matches that of the LCD display, 320 points. This would dictate an A/D converter of at least 9 bits depth (2 = 512 levels). The sampling rate of the Touch screen controller in this example must be rather high so that the displayed image doesnt lag behind the movement of the stylus and so that all of the movements of the stylus are captured. A rate of perhaps 100 samples

per second would suffice. De-bounce. As contact between the layers of the touchscreen are made, there may be some contact bounce. This can be eliminated in either the controller hardware or by the software in the host processor. The most economical way is to do it in the software. Usually, the touch screen is being sampled continuously for the first indication of a touch. This is done on one axis only to simplify the process. When a touch is sensed a short delay is used before the full 2-axis measurement is taken. Alternately, several measurements can be taken and averaged.

Controller calibration: The bulk resistance of the coatings on a touch screen will vary slightly from unit to unit and can change under some environmental conditions and over time. Environmental factors such as temperature and humidity can alter the resistance characteristics of the coating which will affect the position measurements from the touch screen. Changes over time (drift) in the touch screen coating and in the calibration of the touch screen controller can also affect measurement accuracy. Finally, the physical position of the touch screen relative to the LCD display may vary slightly from unit to unit.

Because of these factors an initial calibration of the touch screen is usually necessary, and in critical applications subsequent calibrations may be required periodically to maintain accuracy. The type of application will dictate the calibration requirements. For example, a touch screen application that requires finger touch accuracy on a small LCD may require only about 10%accuracy of the touch measurement relative to a screen location. The combined amount of drift over time and initial variations in characteristics of the touch screen system typically amount to a total of about 5%. In this application calibration would not be necessary. In a second example, an application such as signature capture on a 5 LCD with a resolution of 320 x 240, an accuracy of better than one pixel is necessary over the life of the product. This amounts an accuracy of the position measurement relative to the LCD screen of better than 0.3%. In this application calibration would be required. A typical calibration procedure would be to first display a single pixel near one corner of the display and request the user to place a stylus at that point. A measurement is taken and stored. Next, the procedure is repeated near the opposite corner of the

display. These two readings now represent the accurate positions of two points on the LCD display. A scaling factor can now be computed for each axis and all subsequent positional measurements can be adjusted using this factor. Initial calibration is still required with an 8-wire touch screen is critical applications but periodic re calibration is usually not required. Implementing a touch screen controller can be done is a number of ways. The most popular methods are discussed below. One chip controllers are available and are popular for systems with embedded processors. They require a minimum of support components and will deliver a position measurement directly to the micro controller. A low cost, high volume, application may be implemented by using a micro controller with a built-in A/D converter. The switching array is implemented with FET transistors controlled directly by the micro controller. This scheme requires only a few, inexpensive, external components with most of the work being done by the software in the micro controller. This is the technique used in most hand held PDA type devices. If the application consists of an embedded PC running an operating system such as Windows there are complete touch screen controller cards available. These cards typically deliver a stream of position measurements to the computer as serial data to a Comm. or USB port. An accompanying software driver emulates a mouse so the touch screen/display becomes a complete touch driven user interface for the computer. This system is popular with industrial control applications. Analog resistive is the most common and the most versatile touch screen technology available. It is applicable to almost any device or instrument using an LCD display where intuitive human interaction is needed.

ERGONOMICS AND USAGE Finger stress An ergonomic problem of touchscreens is their stress on human fingers when used for more than a few minutes at a time, since significant pressure can be required for certain types of touchscreen. This can be alleviated for some users with the use of a pen or other device to add leverage and more accurate pointing. The introduction of such items can sometimes be problematic, depending on the desired use (e.g., public kiosks such as A.T.M.s). Also, fine motor control is better achieved with a

stylus, because a finger is a rather broad and ambiguous point of contact with the screen itself.

Fingernail as stylus Pointed nail for easier typing. The concept of using a fingernail trimmed to form a point, to be specifically used as a stylus on a writing tablet for communication, appeared in the 1950 science fiction short story Scanners Live in Vain. These ergonomic issues of direct touch can be bypassed by using a different technique, provided that the user's fingernails are either short or sufficiently long. Rather than pressing with the soft skin of an outstretched fingertip, the finger is curled over, so that the tip of a fingernail can be used instead. The thumb is optionally used to provide support for the finger or for a long fingernail, from underneath. This method does not work on capacitive touch screens. The fingernail's hard, curved surface contacts the touchscreen at one very small point. Therefore, much less finger pressure is needed, much greater precision is possible (approaching that of a stylus, with a little experience), much less skin oil is smeared onto the screen, and the fingernail can be silently moved across the screen with very little resistance, allowing for selecting text, moving windows, or drawing lines. The human fingernail consists of keratin which has a hardness and smoothness similar to the tip of a stylus (and so will not typically scratch a touchscreen). Alternately, very short stylus tips are available, which slip right onto the end of a finger; this increases visibility of the contact point with the screen.

Fingerprints Touchscreens can suffer from the problem of fingerprints on the display. This can be mitigated by the use of materials with optical coatings designed to reduce the visible effects of fingerprint oils, such as the oleo phobic coating used in the iPhone 3G S, or by reducing skin contact by using a fingernail or stylus.

Conclusion: Touch screen technology has revolutionized the way people feel technology as a part of their lives and it brings hope in providing all the people across the world, no matter

whether one has prior experience with technology, with the latest advancements in technology and increasing the average number of users.

It is the path to a future where common people have much better understanding of the application of technology in an abstract way without getting involved in the complexities of the working of the machine, thereby binding man and machine with a stronger bond.

However, technology always poses the threat of destroying the interactive aspect of society. Only the future can tell.

Acknowledgement: We wish to thank all the people who have helped us in making this report. We thank our English teacher for initiating the project which proved to be a very inspirational one. We thank Mr. Harsha for helping us in gathering the information and also helped us with his valuable suggestions for improvement. We express our gratitude towards Mr. Moed who helped by lending his network card.

Bibliography:

-Jason, Stan. Touchscreen. 2 Mar, 2011. http://wikipedia.com/touchscreen.html -George, Philip. Sensors. 2 Mar, 2011. http://touchscreentech.com/resistive.html -Encarta Students Encyclopedia, Keyword: touchscreen