Opportunities and Challenges For Touch and Gesture-Based Systems

Billions of people appreciate the simplicity of touch technology, but for the industrial sector, including home white goods and consumer goods, rugged conditions have been a roadblock to integrating this technology. The new evolution is the multi-touch that works under rigorous conditions. Even though multi-touch screens are widely popular on today's consumer phones and tablets the design principles for industrial applications and demanding environments are different for those in the rather controlled consumer environment for mobile phones and tablets. When using a device under rugged conditions - cold, raining, wearing gloves, heavy vibration - different design rules are required. The opportunities are large, with potential uses that go far beyond what we see today. Great opportunity brings great challenges. We explore the requirements and the design rules for overcoming them.