Touchscreens are one of the simplest, most direct ways to interact with a computer. Although it was only born in 1970, a new technology first brought to market by Elo TouchSystems, it's the most basic way for people to interact. You can point wherever you need to. Adults and children alike can use it directly.
The capabilities of touch screens have been successfully developed and applied in a wide range of business sectors, with airlines using them to train their pilots by simulating the operation of airplanes. Real estate developers use touch screens to allow home buyers to tap their fingers to get a real-color rendering of a house for easy selection. Greeting card companies use touch screens to allow customers to create their own personalized greeting cards. Restaurants use them to simplify operations and achieve point-and-click sales. Medical schools use them to train their students to handle emergencies.
Despite their industrial applications, the most basic functions of touchscreens remain the same.
The touch screen allows a person without any training to use a computer immediately.
Users have the option of clicking through well-defined menus, so touchscreen technology virtually eliminates user error.
Touch screen technology eliminates the need for cumbersome and intimidating keyboards and mice.
Touchscreens are rugged enough to withstand many harsh environments that would normally damage a keyboard and mouse.
Touchscreen technology offers the quickest path to all digital media, without the need for cumbersome text instructions.
Touchscreen technology does not require the addition of other input devices to the desktop and anywhere else, as the input devices are already integrated into the display.
How do touch screens work?
Following are the five most basic components that make up a touchscreen system:
A touch screen for touch use.
A computer (usually a PC) suitable for a touch screen display.
A control card that converts touch signals into control signals.
A set of drivers to communicate between the control card and the operating system.
A set of application development software, which enables the touch program developer to build their own application touch program and adapt the existing touch application content and method according to their needs.
Who is buying touch screens?
Many different types of users are buying touchscreens to simplify computer operations and speed up access to intermediate information. A large portion of these purchasers are from original equipment suppliers (OEMs), many of whom recognize the value of eliminating the keyboard from the client's use and using a more direct and user-friendly touch screen as the user interface. OEMs have developed a number of finger-tap based applications for a wide range of industries. They can be used in hospitals, restaurants, factories, and stadiums, as well as in public **** facilities such as boulevards and tourist centers.
Value-added resellers, like other system integrators, such as IBM, DEC, Apple and EDS, have purchased large quantities of touch-screen devices and designed and installed them in their products as an integrated package for their customers. In many cases, value-added resellers and system integrators are focusing on the optimal human-machine interface in a limited solution or a limited environment to use touch-screen technology to improve the functionality of their own products, and in this way to increase their use and business value. The primary reason that more and more value-added resellers and system integrators are using touchscreen interfaces is that it simplifies the HMI.
Many large companies are also purchasing touchscreens as information technology solutions in their respective fields. For example, many large financial institutions use touch screen technology as a trading platform. Some large retailers like Macy's and J.C. Penny Co. use touch screens for sorting and warehousing.
Elo TouchSystems: Redefining Touch Technology
Elo TouchSystems, the company that created touchscreen technology, recognized early on the potential of a well-designed touchscreen system. After more than two decades of work by Elo TouchSystems engineers, touch technology and products have evolved. In the process, they have repeatedly redefined the major directions of the touch screen industry. Today, the company holds 27 patents on a variety of touch-related technologies, including many for pressure-sensitive sensing - the most popular touchscreen technology today - and several for surface wave technology - which ensures the durability and reliability of touch products in harsh or public environments.
Auxiliary Support: Easily Compose a System
Like an epic movie where the main character gets hundreds of special aids, Elo TouchSystems' product line offers numerous auxiliary devices that are less conspicuous than the touchscreens themselves but are essential components of a touchscreen system. The first is that Elo TouchSystems' line of products also offers a number of ancillary equipment. First, Elo TouchSystems provides a perfect control card production line, can provide a variety of models, a variety of specifications of the control card, from the bus and serial structure, to the Apple bus specifications, and even according to the requirements of the OEM manufacturers, the production can be embedded in their computer boards and cards on the special interface. Second, Elo TouchSystems company's production line provides a series of perfect driver and application software development programs, so that developers can easily develop touch-driven applications. For example, the Screen Mouse software is a unique and innovative application that converts a mouse-driven program into a program that can be controlled by touch. Screen Mouse software makes it possible for a touch screen to simulate the various functions of a mouse, allowing users to pull down menus with their fingers and complete everyday tasks. Screen Mouse software can be used in DOS, Windows, OS/2, Macintosh, Windows NT operating systems.
In addition, Elo TouchSystems offers touchscreens for a wide range of today's popular models and sizes of displays. The company's touchscreen products can be mounted in flat, cylindrical, and spherical types of cathode ray tubes, as well as in ELT-based and LCD displays, and can even meet the requirements of newer technologies such as plasma. The company can offer a wide range of size specifications, from small curved units on large or oversized displays to small, flat touchscreens suitable for compact point-of-sale systems.
IntelliTouch Technology: A Breakthrough in Touch Screen Technology
IntelliTouch touch screen technology (Intelligent Touch Screen Technology) is a surface wave-based technology that offers the best and clearest graphics and long-lasting durability of touch screens. industry took a breakthrough leap. Why? Because to date it is the first and only technology that can be used directly on glass displays without the need for additional plastic cladding, conductive overlays or special cathode ray tube beveled bases. All that is required is a sensing layer of glass between the user and the screen. Surface Wave Technology provides the user with unmatched clarity and durability.Elo TouchSystems applied this technology to the IntelliTouch line of touchscreens and immediately made this family of touchscreens one of the most popular with developers, where they are used primarily in high definition graphic manipulation, utility displays, and you tend to find them in electronic telephone directories, You can often find them in electronic phone books, video games, and computer simulation training systems.
Surface wave technology works
The following is an introduction to the surface wave technology based on the principle of intelligent touch-screen work: intelligent touch-screen includes a layer of high-definition glass with the shape of the display to match the cloak, the cloak on each axis of the layer are a transmitter and receiver of signals piezoelectric transducer device, as well as a set of reflective strips. The touch screen controller transmits a 5MHz frequency pulse signal to the transmitting transducer and converts it into a surface acoustic wave signal, this surface acoustic wave is a kind of mechanical wave that can be propagated on the surface of glass-like objects, the reflective strips can propagate this pulse signal to the surface of the cloak layer, when a finger or a gloved hand or any other soft object touches the touch screen, the vibration wave in the area will be absorbed, the control card analyzes the change of the received signal and analyzes the change of the received signal. The control card can measure the X and Y axis coordinates of your click by analyzing the changes in the received signal to know the area you clicked on. The same Z-axis value can be measured by the number of signals being absorbed, unlike other technologies, which can only be judged by the ratio of the click position and thus can easily generate drift and cause erroneous responses. Intelligent touchscreen technology is a stable technology and provides drift-free operation.
IntelliTouch touchscreen line
The IntelliTouch touchscreen line is popular in applications where graphics and reliability are a priority. For example, IntelliTouch touchscreens can be used in catalog systems, video-based gaming systems, real-time real estate listing systems, and the increasingly popular computer-simulated training systems used to train nurses, pilots, managers, and other types of employees. All of these applications require high-quality graphics output, and IntelliTouch touchscreens are well suited to meet these requirements.
IntelliTouch touchscreen products not only provide a brighter, clearer image, but because it consists of a simple, single-layer structure, it can withstand external shocks to ensure good reliability. Traditional touch screen has such a common problem, that is, can not be repaired by scratching the conductive cloak layer, and IntelliTouch touch screen due to all-glass structure, there is no such problem, it can resist the damage of external forces. We know that the installation in some public **** occasions (such as boulevards, tourist centers, supermarkets and other places) of the touch screen due to the customer's error or rough operation is easy to cause damage, at this time, IntelliTouch touch screen can be fully embodied in its superiority. There have been all over the United States of America's touch screen has done reliability statistics, IntelliTouch touch screen is often used in the bar in the video game applications (such as touch poker machine), so some of the red-eyed gamblers often take it to vent their grievances, but even so it is still able to withstand such damage and work very well. Therefore, the drift-free IntelliTouch touch screen system can ensure good reliability, and can continue to work without the hassle of frequent calibration.
In some colder applications, other touchscreens will encounter a challenge: users will often wear thicker gloves, making it harder to activate the touchscreen's control mechanisms. At this time IntelliTouch touch screen provides you with a good solution, if you use the IntelliTouch touch screen, you can avoid this trouble, whether you wear gloves or not, it can be a good response to your operation.
Pressure-sensitive features: Three-dimensional applications
In addition to being sensitive to the area being touched, surface-wave IntelliTouch touchscreens can also be sensitive to the pressure being applied, which adds more control for the user. For example, engineers in an engine plant who are responsible for checking the quality of an engine can change the engine's speed by changing the force with which they click on an icon to check the quality of the engine.
AccuTouch Touch Screen Technology: The Leader in Touch Screens
In addition to its surface wave technology products, Elo TouchSystems also manufactures and markets another popular touch screen product, resistive touch screens. Elo TouchSystems has applied their resistive touch screen patents to AccuTouch's touch screen product line. The AccuTouch touchscreens can be used in restaurants, factories, hospitals, and other applications, where they demonstrate good efficiency and reliability in harsh environments that are subject to contamination and humidity.
Below we introduce AccuTouch (resistive) touch-screen technology works: each touch-screen is composed of a glass panel and the monitor with a very good composition, the glass layer of the inner side of a layer of transparent hard plastic conduction layer, the conduction layer and the glass layer between a layer of less than one-thousandth of an inch of the gap between the screen when clicking with the hand. Plastic conductive layer will contact the inner glass layer, and transmit the click signal, the controller can determine the location of the click in less than one hundredth of a second.
Applications for AccuTouch Touch Panels
Many users choose AccuTouch touch panels for their durability and performance even in demanding environments. If desired, a sealed protective layer can even be added to the surface of the AccuTouch touchscreen to make the display waterproof. This allows it to be used in a wide range of applications such as fast food, fine dining, and other click-and-consume situations, where the cashier can tap it to enter a sale. AccuTouch touchscreens are also heavily used in factories in the statistics of the National Emergency Management Agency. In medicine, AccuTouch touchscreens are resistant to a wide range of contaminants and can provide a simple, yet good working interface for healthcare workers.
Multi-purpose: Wearing gloves can also operate the touch screen
Unlike other touch screen technologies, AccuTouch and IntelliTouch touch screens can be operated while wearing gloves, which makes it not only adaptable to the public in cold environments, but also meets the need for frequent use of gloves in a number of applications, including food processing, hospitals, factories, and so on. Factories and other occasions that require the frequent use of gloves, sometimes these occasions the staff must wear gloves to be able to carry out operations, such as the United States, some states (eg: New York State) law provides that food processors in the operation of the time must wear gloves, this time this technology fully embodies the advantages of its Elo TouchSystems for such a difficult problem to provide a very good Elo TouchSystems offers a solution to this challenge.
What's next - the future of touchscreen technology
Since the mid-1990s, several different trends have changed the booming touchscreen market. First of all, the price of touchscreens will continue to fall, while the application capabilities of touchscreens will be further developed. This favorable trend will improve the performance-price ratio of the product, which will boost the sales of the product. Especially in the application as a personal computer in the unknown field, it can provide a friendly user interface for unskilled operators.
Elo TouchSystems plans to ensure that their latest touch-screen products will be synchronized with the latest style of display on the market, while Elo TouchSystems will also focus on the use of microprocessors and software-controlled products, they are also in the development of personal computer chips and high-end operating system development to open up a new road. Elo TouchSystems will continue to maintain their leading position in the field of touch screen technology, will target the most advanced technology in the touch screen market, to guide the direction of the touch screen market.