TouchNetix’s aXiom touchscreen technology completely solves the typical issues faced by capacitive touchscreens – such as poor performance when wet or when using gloved hands – with improved sensing and by integrating force-sensing capabilities and haptics. This reliable, all-weather HMI is powered by TouchNetix’s aXiom range of ICs, which were specially designed to address the needs of industrial and automotive applications; it is currently being used in the Mercedes EQS, so you know this is PROVEN technology!
The main difference between the aXiom touchscreen and the standard capacitive model is the ability for the screen to additionally sense multi-touch, multi-pressure interactions – down to 10 g – with a pressure spatial resolution of around 1.5 cm between the points of contact. Obviously, this sensing comes with an additional sensor array as part of the screen, but this simply means that aXiom technology offers safety-enhancing systemic redundancy. A video on TouchNetix’s website shows the scenario of someone using a touchscreen while wearing heavy motorbike gloves in simulated rain, and the aXiom chip detects the user’s intentions flawlessly.
aXiom technology also exploits the inherent high sensitivity of their capacitive sensing mechanism – >100x the sensitivity of competing technology – to enable touchless operation of screens, without the need for additional electrodes or sensors that computer vision or IR-projector-based systems require. With an operating range from within 5-6 cm of the surface of the device, the aXiom-driven solution also does not suffer from far-field effects that may cause the AI interpretation of vision-based approaches to mis-trigger. Among other advantages, the aXiom IC is also able to automatically discriminate between hovering and touching, enabling a vastly extended usability even with gloved hands; this technology is ideal for environments where touching a device would be unadvisable, such as in medical or industrial sectors. Presently, aXiom appears to support four touchless gestures, ‘airDwell’, ‘airFlick’, ‘airTap’, and ‘airSpin’.
TouchNetix offers evaluation kits and demo boxes (pictured) in a range of sizes and aspect ratios that allow you to fully test standard and custom touchscreen solutions for your application. The board-based kits have headers for probes and analysis and offer a serial interface for connecting to your host system. TouchNetix also provides a USB bridge board for connection to a PC. The demo boxes provide a ready-to-go testing environment as shown in our video interview taken from Electronica, coming very soon. Check it out for a real in-depth overview of their products, including a smaller demo box for their pressure sensor.
Keep designing!
(Image sourced from TouchNetix)
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