Screens with Innovative Touch

National Business Review
18 July 2003 

By Stephen Ballantyne 


An innovative New Zealand company has developed a technology that will probably displace all competing solutions. Touch screens aren't new but the ones NextWindow is making in its central Auckland factory are probably the best in the world.

Other devices use specially coated or layered screens that are inherently expensive, with their cost rising steeply according to the size of the screen; NextWindow uses a couple of sensors at the edge of the screen's cover glass, an array of LEDs and a digital signal processor to do the same thing better and cheaper.

By comparing the signals from the sensors when the lights are on and off and when something - a finger or a stylus - is touching the screen, NextWindow's DSP can triangulate the position of that something with a high degree of accuracy over a large surface.

It's ideal for kiosk applications, where the light source can be used to add illumination to the screen (although normally it's completely unobtrusive) and where the glass surface needs no more protection than a normal window. Stick chewing gum on the glass and the DSP will register it at first, then ignore it if it doesn't move and something else does.

Once again it's a new application of existing technology. Triangulation from two sensors over a large surface was done a few years ago on electronic whiteboards using ultrasonics but NextWindow's optical solution is much more precise and versatile.

At the moment it isn't pressure-sensitive but that's easy enough to implement by simply adding transducers to measure how hard the glass is being pressed - and that could change the economics of Tablet PCs, which up to now have all used relatively expensive touch screens.

NextWindow's system could even be sold as an after-market device that could retroactively add touch sensitivity to existing computer screens.

Inventor John Newton originally devised the technology as an ad hoc way to add touch sensitivity to a web-based shop window kiosk system for a single client but his solution to that problem obviously had wider applications.

According to NextWindow chief executive Al Monro the screens can be large. "We've got one we're working on for a projection system that's 1.6 by 1.2 metres but we did one at the Viaduct Basin for Phillips that is 1.7m across, which touch-enabled a 107cm plasma screen and a printed surrounding panel. We think that's probably the largest touch screen in the world."

NextWindow Screens are also installed on the observation deck of the SkyTower in Auckland.

"Technology New Zealand gave us a $560,000 grant last year to help us miniaturise the technology further," Mr Monro said. "Our objective is to get down to about 38cm, a size suitable for Tablet PCs. We're also looking at various ways to add functions from existing pen systems, including gesture-based systems."

In the meantime, NextWindow's factory is busy turning out touch screens to order, particularly for Vodafone, which is using the system for its kiosk-based promotions.

"We've proven the product in the New Zealand market," Mr Monro said. "The next thing is that we've signed up Fujitsu in the UK as a reseller and Jazzmile in Australia. Our strategy is now to sell through channels to the display and kiosk market."

But after using NextWindow's product it's hard not to see an enormous potential for expansion. The touch screen business worldwide is worth about $US1.3 billion and is expected to double by 2006 - and that's using technology that isn't as good as NextWindow's is. There's almost certainly a much bigger factory in the company's future.