Thursday, February 25, 2010
Sharp Optical Touch Panel Presentation
Sharp has presented the status and challenges in its optical touch panel development at Power-Saving and Touch-Panel Technologies for Displays day held by Sharp Laboratories of Europe for Society for Information Display (SID) UK Chapter in January 2010. The panel combines image sensor with LCD and intended for mobile devices. Few slides from the very nice presentation:
Philips has presented this kind of technology many years ago. They used a photoresistive element in each pixel. I think that there was a presentation at ESSCIRC conference.
ReplyDeleteInteresting technology !
I don't think this counts as an image sensor if I am understanding this right. It seems there is a photodetector that senses the shadow of a fingertip..or several distributed photodetectors and the shadow centroided (ok, that is just a guess).
ReplyDeleteAnyway, there is not a formed image, just a shadow. Not even a lens, I don't think. (Microlenses are really just light funnels).
Anyway, it all sounds good and interesting as said above. Just not a bona fide image sensor in my opinion. i am also guessing the photodetectors do their job but compared to any image sensor pixel, are not so great.
Maybe there is some plenoptic way to create a (3D) image of people staring into a computer screen using this sort of technology. Then you need a few good, small photodetectors and a real lenslet. Probably not a new idea.