Touch and Gesture Technologies

One of the best ways to make your product stand out from the competition is to provide an attractive, engaging and easy-to-use user interface. A high-quality user interface provides reliable functionality, easy interaction and robust performance in all environments. From your customer’s perspective, the user interface is the product.

Touch buttons have replaced mechanical buttons and are now considered the gold standard in many products such as audio devices, Internet of Things (IoT) devices and even cars. However, they only support two states: on and off. Adding a touch slider or wheel enhances a product’s usability by enabling quick intuitive and quick adjustments to a variety of functions, such as controlling the volume on an audio device or adjusting the temperature on a thermostat.

Many consumers expect the smartphone user experience with the products they purchase. These touchpad- or touchscreen-based interfaces let them use the single- and dual-finger gestures they are familiar with—taps, side-to-side and up-and-down swipes, pinch and zoom, rotations—to control their devices easily. This type of interface can be used to add control features to headphones, smart light switches, automotive interiors, industrial automation and many other applications.

3D gesture detection is another option for adding modern, simple and intuitive user control while streamlining a product’s design and increasing its buyer appeal. This technology uses an electric field (E-field) to enable advanced proximity sensing that can detect, track and classify hand motions made in free space. Imagine using the approach wake-up to automatically backlight your user interface or the airwheel gesture to control an air conditioner’s temperature setting or the volume of a smart speaker. 3D gesture-based control is also an excellent option for implementing hygienic contactless touch to reduce exposure to and spread of diseases.

You may be wondering about the costs and complexities of adding a touch- or gesture-enabled user interface to your product. We have the technologies that you need, a wide assortment of development resources and technical support experts with extensive experience and knowledge to support you throughout your design cycle. If it’s time for you to add value to your product, we are ready to help.

A touchscreen or touch button might be used to control the operation of safety-critical applications, such as turning on or off a cooktop burner or increasing or decreasing the speed of a car via cruise control. It is important that these operations are available at any time to the user, that the system and signals are in a valid state during operation and that malfunctions are discovered and reported so that the system can take the appropriate actions to avoid hazardous consequences. We offer touch solutions for functional safety applications in the automotive, industrial, medical and appliance markets. These products are supported by UL/VDE IEC 60730 Class B certifications, TÜV SÜD-certified MPLAB^® XC compilers, diagnostic code, Failure Modes, Effects, and Diagnostic Analysis (FMEDA) reports and other resources.

While touch and gesture control can be used in a vast array of automotive, industrial, consumer and other applications, here are several examples of how to implement our technologies in modern designs.