Sensitive Object's Anywhere MultiTouch extends touch sensitivity to the whole device
Sensitive Object, a French startup best known for its louche, Gitanes-smoking engineers and its love of cocktail jazz, has just announced the development of Anywhere MultiTouch, a Windows 7-compliant platform that brings touch sensitivity to glass, aluminum, and plastic, through the use of piezoelectric sensors. This product is an extension of the company's ReverSys technology, which recognizes the precise location where an object is touched through soundwaves, with the new platform throwing in handwriting recognition and palm rejection for good measure. It looks like multitouch has finally been freed from the tyranny of the display, with developers now able to incorporate actions along the whole device. Excited? We bet you are. Full PR after the break.
Sensitive Object Unveils Anywhere MultiTouch™, the First Platform Turning Any Part of a Product Touch Sensitive
Further Developments of Patented ReverSys® Technology Open New Horizon for Touch-Sensitive Applications
PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sensitive Object, a start-up specialized in man-machine interface and owner of a patented technology based on the recognition of sound waves in solid objects called ReverSys®, today announced its new Anywhere MultiTouch™ platform . This new platform, available at a very competitive price, is multi-touch, Windows 7 compliant, offers handwriting recognition and palm rejection for a high added value Touch experience.
Anywhere MultiTouch™ provides touch-sensitivity on the whole surface of the product, including screens but also any other parts of the product. This new platform offers numerous brand new opportunities to create new multi-touch experiences.
Anywhere MultiTouch™ can be used in any kind of product, and on various materials such as glass, aluminum and plastics. The platform simply relies on two small piezoelectric sensors, a controller and some software.
This new platform provides flexibility to designers, manufacturers and software editors as Sensitive Object technology offers the capability to add multi-touch parts anywhere, and associated functionality specific to running applications (e.g.: a game application running on a mobile phone uses both the top, bottom, or rear of the handset as touch sensitive parts; while an email application only needs one edge to scroll the text).
"Sensitive Object's products are now used in various markets, such as home automation, interactive point of sale or information desks and gaming. We're now addressing the handheld and consumer markets with new innovative products that will definitely change the way people interact with their devices. Anywhere MultiTouch™ may apply to mobile phones, netbooks, laptops, PCs, portable games terminals, and many others." explains Bruno Thuillier, CTO of Sensitive Object.
Anywhere MultiTouch™: a revolution in multi-touch applications
Anywhere MultiTouch™ is an enhancement of ReverSys® technology invented and patented by Sensitive Object. It is based on the recognition of sound waves propagated in an object when the user touches it. A touch on an object produces a pattern of sound waves through the material. This pattern creates an acoustic signature that is unique to the location of the impact. This property was discovered through the study of a process known as Time Reversal Mirror, which can be used to precisely identify the source of sound waves. Sensitive Object had the idea to associate this acoustic signature to a precise action in order to create a touch screen or touch controlled panel. This association is managed by proprietary signal processing algorithms combined with software: a touch at a precise place generates a precise action. A simple glass panel equipped with two piezoelectric sensors is used to detect sound waves and to determine the acoustic signature. If the signature is recognized, the action is operated, if not, nothing happens.
About Sensitive Object
Sensitive Object is a start-up company created in 2003, based on work at the Laboratoire Ondes et Acoustique (Waves and Acoustics Laboratory) into the theory of Time Reversal Mirror. Sensitive Object's mission is to make any product or surface interactive by utilizing its Anywhere MultiTouch™ platform, based on the principle of the time reversal of sound waves in solid materials. The company produces highly innovative Human Machine Interfaces (HMI), which respond to touch. The company develops and markets a range of products based on its patented acoustic technologies. Sensitive Object has operations in Paris (France) and Taiwan.
