Volume No. 1 Issue No.

1 International Journal on ISSN: 2456-5695

Fundamentals of Science and Engineering Research

A REVIEW ON TOUCHLESS TOUCH SCREENAND ITS

APPLICATIONS
M. Lakshmi Prasad [1] Sk.Sameer[2] S.BabaRabbani[3]
[1]
Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, NBKRIST, Nellore, AP, India.
prasad.hinduniv@gmail.com
[2,3,4]
Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, NBKRIST, Nellore, AP, India.
pesalasaimanoj05@gmail.com, welcome2sameer@gmail.com, rabbanishaik1997@gmail.com,

ABSTRACT
An innovation among the present world technologies, Touch less touch screen is the predominant technology which leads to
foremost place among the touch less generation. It creates a great furore initially. We have fiddle with the touch screens and
bothered about scratching up the screens.The device is based on optical pattern recognition using a solid state optical matrix
sensor with a lens to detect hand motions. This sensor is then connected to a digital image processor, which interprets the
patterns of motion and outputs the results as signals to control appliances, machinery, fixtures or any device controllable through
electrical signals. If broad-based gestures-such as hand movement from left to right or front to back-are required, a touch less
sensor may be a better fit. This technology is used in applications like bathroom dispensing units and automatic doors that use
motion or interruption to create response. It is mainly used in Computers, MP3 players or mobile phones without touching it.

Keywords:Touch less Touch screen, Finger stress, pattern recognition, PDA, Cathode Ray tube.

I.INTRODUCTION

The touch less touch screen sounds like it would be nice and easy, however after closer examination it looks
like it could be quite a workout. This unique screen is made by TouchKo, White Electronics Designs, and
Groupe 3D. Now this technology doesnt compare to the hologram-like IO2 Technologies Heliodisplay M3,
but thats for anyone that has $18,100 lying around.

What is touch screen technology?

Touch screen technology is the direct manipulation type gesture based technology. Directmanipulation is the
ability to manipulate digital world inside a screen without the use of command-line-commands. A device
which works on touch screen technology is coined as Touch screen. A touch screen is an electronic visual
display capable of detecting and effectively locating a touch over its display area.It is sensitive to the
touch of a human finger, hand, pointed finger nail and passive objects like stylus. Users can simply move
things on the screen, scroll them, make them bigger and many more.

Today, low-power touch less sensor ICs have a significantly smaller footprint, yet are powerful
enough to drive multiple LEDs and enable gesture input in multiple directions. This opens up the possibility
for many new applications including ones in the medical field. Everybody loves a touch screen and when
you get a gadget with touch screen the experience is really exhilarating. But gradually, the exhilaration
started fading. While using the phone with the finger tip or with the stylus the screen started getting lots of
finger prints and scratches.

For example, minimizing contact in a hospital system helps reduce the spread of disease. During a
procedure, a surgeon may need to refer to a text while doing an experimental procedure. If the information
was transferred to an electronic format the surgeon could scroll through the pages by gesturing at a
screen; the surgeon wouldnt have to come in direct contact with any surface.

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Volume No. 1 Issue No. 1 International Journal on ISSN: 2456-5695
Fundamentals of Science and Engineering Research

Fig 1.View of Touch less Touch screen.

II. HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT TOUCH SCREEN

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 touch
screen incorporating a transparent surface was developed by Sam Hurst and Elographics.In 1977,
Elographics developed and patented five-wire resistive technology, the most popular touch screen
technology in use today. Touch screens first gained some visibility with the invention of the computer-
assisted learning terminal, which came out in 1975 as part of the PLATO project. Touch screens 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, touch screens.From 19791985, the
Firelight CMI (and Firelight 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 Firelight
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 touch screen computer. It did not have a
touch screen 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 no transparent object on the screen.Until
recently, most consumer touch screens 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.Touch screens 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 touch screen
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 touch screens as a
highly desirable user interface component and have begun to integrate touch screen functionality into the
fundamental design of their products.

Development
Virtually all of the significant touch screen technology patents were filed during the 1970s and 1980s and
have expired. Touch screen component manufacturing and product design are no longer encumbered by
royalties or legalities with regard to patents and the manufacturing of touch screen-enabled displays on all
kinds of devices is widespread.The development of multipoint touch screens 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 touch screen simultaneously.With the growing acceptance of
many kinds of products with an integral touch screen interface, the marginal cost of touch screen technology
is routinely absorbed into the products that incorporate it and is effectively eliminated. As typically occurs
with any technology, touch screen hardware and software has sufficiently matured and been perfected over
more than three decades to the point where its reliability is proven. As such, touch screen displays are found
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today in airplanes, automobiles, gaming consoles, machine control systems, appliances, and handheld
display devices of every kind. With the influence of the multi-touch enabled iPhone, the touch screen
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

Finger stress
An ergonomic problem of touch screens 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 touch screen. 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.

Fig 3.Finger stress

III. TYPES OF TOUCHSCREEN TECHNOLOGY

Let us now give an engineers eye to this revolutionary technology. A touch screen is a 2dimensional
sensing device made of 2 sheets of material separated by spacers. There are four maintouch screen
technologies:
1) Resistive
2) Capacitive
3) Surface Acoustic Wave
4) Infrared

A. Resistive Touch screen Technology

A resistive touch screen panel is composed of several layers, the most important of which are two thin,
metallic, 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. In another
way the resistive system consists of a normal glass panel that is covered with a conductive and a resistive
metallic layer. These two layers are held apart by spacers, and a scratch-resistant layer is placed on top of
the whole setup. An electrical current runs through the two layers while the monitor is operational. When a
user touches the screen, the two layers make contact in that exact spot. The change in the electrical field is
noted and the coordinates of the point of contact are calculated by the computer. Once the coordinates are
known, a special driver translates the touch into something that the operating system can understand, much
as a computer mouse driver translates a mouse's movements into a click or a drag.

B. Capacitive Touch screen Technology

The Capacitive Touch screen Technology is the most popular and durable touch screen technology used all
over the world at most. It consists of a glass panel coated with a capacitive (conductive) material Indium Tin
Oxide (ITO). The capacitive systems transmit almost 90% of light from the monitor. Some of the devices
using capacitive touch screen are Motorola Doom, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Samsung Galaxy SII, Apples
iPad. There are various capacitive technologies available as explained below.
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Volume No. 1 Issue No. 1 International Journal on ISSN: 2456-5695
Fundamentals of Science and Engineering Research

Fig 4.Capactive Touch Screen

Surface-Capacitive screens, in this technique only one side of the insulator are coated with a conducting
layer. While the monitor is operational, a uniform electrostatic field is formed over the conductive layer.
Whenever, a human finger touches the screen, conduction of electric charges occurs over the uncoated layer
which results in the formation of a dynamic capacitor. The computer or the controller then detects the
position of touch by measuring the change in capacitance at the four corners of the screen.

Pros and Cons: The surface capacitive touch screen is moderately durable and needs calibration during
manufacture. Since a conductive material is required to operate this screen, passive stylus cannot be used for
surface capacitive touch screen.In the Projected-Capacitive Touch screen Technology, the conductive ITO
layer is etched to form a grid of multiple horizontal and vertical electrodes. It involves sensing along both
the X and Y axis using clearly etched ITO pattern.

In the Projected-Capacitive Touch screen Technology, the conductive ITO layer is etched to form a grid of
multiple horizontal and vertical electrodes. It involves sensing along both the X and Y axis using clearly
etched ITO pattern.

The projective screen contains a sensor at every intersection of the row and column, thereby increasing the
accuracy of the system. There are two types of projected capacitive touch screen:Mutual Capacitance and
Self Capacitance.

C.Surface Acoustic Wave Touch screen technology

The Surface Acoustic Wave Touch screen technology contains two transducers (transmitting andreceiving)
placed along the X-axis and Y-axis of the monitors glass plate along with some reflectors. The waves
propagate across the glass and are reflected back to the sensors. When the screen is touched, the waves are
absorbed and a touch is detected at that point. These reflectors reflect all electrical signals sent from one
transducer to another. This technology provides excellent throughput and image clarity.

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Volume No. 1 Issue No. 1 International Journal on ISSN: 2456-5695
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Pros and Cons: 100% clarity is obtained as no metallic layers are present on the screen, it can be operated
using passive devices like stylus, glove or finger nail. Screen can get contaminated with much exposure to
dirt, oil which may haunt its smooth functioning.

D. Infrared Touch screen Technology

In the Infrared Touch screen Technology, an array of X- and Y- axes are fitted with pairs of IR Leds and
photo detectors. The photo detectors detect any change in the pattern of light emitted by the Leds whenever
the user touches the monitor/screen.The starred assets..!!The potential novice touch screen technology has
many advantages over the conventional QWERTY keyboard and monitor. It is very flexible as opposed to
its physical counterparts since the digital displays can be configured anytime at will of the user as per the
functionalities. Touch screen allows users to customize the interface for example alteration of language and
size. By adjusting the size of the keyboard, user can utilize the spare area for display and other uses. With
the decreasing size of computers and tablets these days, touch screen is an added advantage. Multiple
functions has to be performed on a small screen, touch screen allows switching to a function at users will.
For example, virtual keyboard which is an application of touch screen is displayed on the screen only when
the user allows it to be.However, there is also the other side of the coin where there some functionality
which cannot be performed using a regular touch screen like cut-and-paste, right click menu options, drop-
down menus.

IV.APPLICATION OF TOUCHLESS TOUCH SCREEN

The various application of touch screen are as follows.

1. Informational kiosks
2. Trade show displays
3. Museum / tourism displays
4. Point-of-sale terminals
5. Restaurant systems
6. Employee time clocks
7. Industrial process controls
8. World Wide Web access kiosks
9. Home automation systems
10. Casino and other gaming systems
11. Computer access for the physically disabled

V. TouchlessTouch screenWall
About a year ago, HP began working on a ginormous touchscreen display for their PR firms
Manhattan offices. The resulting product, called the Wall of Touch, was such a hit that it has found its way
into the workplaces of other select clients, with more on the way. Ironically, despite its name, one of the
things that make the Wall unique is that users dont have to actually touch it.

The Wall of Touch is made up of as many as nine 43 to 46-inch, 1080p panels. HP decided not to go
with one big panel, as it would require rear projection and a translucent screen material that would
compromise resolution. The Wall is driven by an HP Z800 workstation, essentially making it a huge HP
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Touch Smart computer. Built-in optical cameras and a magnetic strip detect when users are nearing it, thus
the lack of needing to actually touch the screen. If users cant reach the corners, it still works with a mouse
or keyboard.

Versions of the Wall are currently in use at the headquarters of the National Basketball Association,
as well as the Continental Airlines counter in the Houston airport.

Fig.5TouchlessTouchscreen on wall

VI.Working and Its technology

It obviously requires a sensor but the sensor is neither hand mounted nor present on the screen. The
sensor can be placed either on the table or near the screen. And the hardware setup is so compact that it can
be fitted into a tiny device like a MP3 player or a mobile phone. It recognizes the position of an object from
as 5 feet.
Faster measurements also have the benefit of reducing overall system power. The infrared LED is
the biggest contributor to a proximity systems power budget. Minimizing the time that the LED needs to
remain on reduces the overall system power consumption.

Fig 6.Working of Touch less touch screen

Working
The system is capable of detecting movements in 3-dimensions without ever having to put your fingers on
the screen. Their patented touch less interface doesnt require that you wear any special sensors on your
hand either. You just point at the screen and you can manipulate objects in 3D. Sensors are mounted around
the screen that is being used, by interacting in the line-of-sight of these sensors the motion is detected and
interpreted into on-screen movements. What is to stop unintentional gestures being used as input is not
entirely clear, but it looks promising nonetheless. The best part? Elliptic Labs says their technology will be
easily small enough to be implemented into cell phones and iPods.

Fig 7. Technology behind Touch less touch screen

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Volume No. 1 Issue No. 1 International Journal on ISSN: 2456-5695
Fundamentals of Science and Engineering Research

A basic touch screen has three main components: a touch sensor, a controller, and a software driver. The
touch screen is an input device, so it needs to be combined with a display and a PC or other device to make
a complete touch input system.

A.TouchSensor
A touch screen sensor is a clear glass panel with a touch responsive surface. The touch sensor/panel is
placed over a display screen so that the responsive area of the panel covers the viewable area of the video
screen. There are several different touch sensor technologies on the market today, each using a different
method to detect touch input. The sensor generally has an electrical current or signal going through it and
touching the screen causes a voltage or signal change. This voltage change is used to determine the location
of the touch to the screen.

B.Controller
The controller is a small PC card that connects between the touch sensor and the PC. It takes information
from the touch sensor and translates it into information that PC can understand. The controller is usually
installed inside the monitor for integrated monitors or it is housed in a plastic case Tor external touch
addsoverlays.The controller determines what type of interface/connection you will need on the PC.
Integratedtouch monitors will have an extra cable connection on the back for the touch screen. Controllers
are available that can connect to a Serial/COM port (PC) or to a USB port (PC or Macintosh). Specialized
controllers are also available that work with DVD players and other devices.

C.Software Driver
The driver is a software update for the PC system that allows the touch screen and computer to work
together. It tells the computer's operating system how to interpret the touch event information that is sent
from the controller. Most touch screen drivers today are a mouse-emulation type driver. This makes
touching the screen the same as clicking your mouse at the same location on the screen. This allows the
touch screen to work with existing software and allows new applications to be developed without the need
for touch screen specific programming. Some equipment such as thin client terminals, DVD players, and
specialized computer systems either do not use software drivers or they have their own built-in touch screen
driver.

VII.PROS and CRONS

1. Touchscreen devices have limited buttons that will possibly break after 3 4 years.
2. Touchscreen devices usually have simpler user interfaces Ex. Ipod Apps.
3. Having less or not buttons means that you can put more effort into having a big screen.
4. For the people worried about hygiene, most devices are easy to clean, some are even dirt, dust and
grease resistant.
5. For people new or uncomfortable with normal desktops, touch screens are easy to use helping more
people get used to using computers.
6. This technology is also used in medical field while during surgeries.
7. Switch and buttons are not physically required. Device makers can make and modify
various input interfaces creatively by software.
8. With multi-touch function, various operations/inputs (eg: zoom-in/zoom-out, rotation) are possible.
9. Because a user operates an electronic device by directly touching the images on the display he is
seeing, the operation will be intuitive, thus anyone can operate it from first use.
10. The whole unit is space-saving because display and input space are integrated. There is a lot of
flexibility in design.
11. Unlike keyboard or physical switch, there will be no dirt, dust, and moisture getting into the spaces
between buttons. Thus, it is easy for maintenance.

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Volume No. 1 Issue No. 1 International Journal on ISSN: 2456-5695
Fundamentals of Science and Engineering Research

Fig 8.Medical application of Touch less touch screen

DISADVANTAGES
1. The screen has to be big enough to be able to touch the buttons without missing.
2. Having a big bright screen and needing massive computing power to run this means a very low
battery life.
3. In direct sunlight it is much less effecting and most of the time very difficult to read the screen.
4. If a touchscreen devise were to crash the whole screen would be unresponsive, and because of the
lack of buttons revoering it would be very difficult.
5. They usually cost more than ordinary devices.
6. Screen has to be really big not to miss things when pressing them with your finger: I
7. only like HTC Touch HD, screen size wise, and big screen means increased size of
8. the device
9. Big screen leads to low battery life
10. Touch screen means screen cant be read too well in direct sunlight as it applies an additional not
100% transparent
11. Touch screen devices usually has no additional keys (see the iPhone) and this means when an app
crashes, without crashing the OS, you cant get to the main menu as thewhole screen becomes
unresponsive
12. Touch screens usually have low precision, virtual QWERTY keyboards being one of the most
annoying things
13. Most user interfaces are not optimized for thumb operation, so a stylus in necessary, and this means
using two hands
14. Screens get very dirty
15. These devices require massive computing power which leads to slow devices and low battery life

VIII. CONCLUSION
Todays thoughts are again around user interface. Efforts are being put to better the technology day-
in and day-out. The Touch less touch screen user interface can be used effectively in computers, cell phones,
webcams and laptops. May be few years down the line, our body can be transformed into a virtual mouse,
virtual keyboard. Our body may be turned in to an input device. Touch systems represent a rapidly growing
subset of the display market. The majority of touchsystems include touch sensors relying on vacuum-
deposited coatings, so touch coatings present opportunity for suppliers of vacuum coatings and coating
equipments.Touch sensor manufactures currently require thin films in the areas of transparent conductors,
optical interference coating and mechanical protective coatings. Touch sensors technical requirements
dovetail well with those of the flat panel and display filter markets. The reality should provide value added
opportunities to operations participating in these areas.

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Volume No. 1 Issue No. 1 International Journal on ISSN: 2456-5695
Fundamentals of Science and Engineering Research

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[8]. http://technabob.com/blog/2007/03/19/the-touchless-touchscreen-monitor/
[9]. http://www.etre.com/blog/2008/02/elliptic_labs_touchless_user_interface
[10]. http://lewisshepherd.wordpress.com/2008/10/13/stop-being-so-touchy
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