Name: Obed Chinedomanya Dalphine Matric Number: 12/SMS02/063

THE RECENT ADVANCEMENT AND APPLICATION IN TOUCH SCREEN TECHNOLOGY: DEFINITION OF TOUCHSCREEN A touch screen is a video display screen that has been sensitized to receive input from touch of finger; some touch screen emit good of infrared beams, sound waves, or a slight electric current that is broken when the screen is touched. The computer senses the point in the grid where the break occurs and responds with an appropriate action.

Touch screen can also be MULTITOUCH. Multitouch was introduced by Apple Oults on its iPhone, multitouch is a touchscreen input methods that allows two or more fingers (or two hands) to be used on the screen at one time. It allows pinching and stretching gestures on the screen to control zooming. This technology is now also used on some tablet computers and for large screen in technical settings. As mentioned touchscreens are becoming more and more popular. Microsoft for instance, has developed the surface tabletop computer, an interactive 30-inch touch responsive table that can be used to order meals or display maps. It is now in use at Harrah’s RW hotel in Las Vegas and in AT&T phone stores.

Researchers is what is known as hepatic-active touch-systems are exploring how to create devices that will allow people feel what isn‘t there, with this kind of “virtual touch”, a dental student could train in drilling down into the decay of a stimulated tooth without fear of destroying a real healthy tooth. Doctors would have a new surgical tool, video games would be made more realistic and drivers would be able to manipulate dials and knobs without taking their eyes off the road. Touchscreen are found in kiosks, ATMs, airport tourist directories, hotel TV screen (for guest checkout), smart phones and campus information kiosk, etc..

APPLE, MICROSOFT, IBM, AND OTHERS: THE TOUCH SCREEN COMES OF AGE. WIMP- windows, icons, means and pointing. Now the hegemony of WIMP may be coming to an end, say developers of technologies based on human touch and gesture. For evidence, look no further than Apple’s iPhone. From a human- interface point of view, the combined display and input capacities of the iPhone’s screen, which can be manipulated by multiple fingers in a variety of intuitive touches and gestures, is nothing short of revolutionary. The iPhone isn’t the only commercial device to take the human-computer device to take the human-computer interface to a new level. The Microsoft Surface computer puts input and output devices in a large tabletop device that can accommodate touches and gestures and even recognize physical objects laid it. In addition, gesture-activated display that supports small group collaboration. It can even tell who is touching. These devices point the way toward upcoming era of more natural and intuitive interaction between human and machine. Robert Jacob, a computer science professor at Tufts University, says touch is just one component of a becoming field of research on post. WIMP interfaces, a broad coalition of technologies he calls reality-based interaction. Although, they have not gotten much traction in the marketplace yet, advanced touch technologies from IBM may point a way to the future. In everywhere displays project, IBM mounts projectors in one or more parts of an ordinary room and projects images of touch screens onto ordinary surface, such as tablets, walls, or the floors. Video cameras capture images of users touching various parts of the surfaces and send the information for interpretation by a computer. The touch screens contain no electronics indeed, no computer parts at all, so they can easily be moved and reconfigured.

Some researchers say that a logical extension of touch technology is gesture recognition, by which a system recognizes hands or finger movements across a screen or close to it without requiring an actual touch. “our technology is halfway there,” IBM’s Pinhanez says, “because we recognize the gesture of touching rather than occlusion of a particular area. You can go over buttons without triggering them.” Patrick Baudisch at Microsoft Research says the Microsoft prototypes can already act on finger gestures, with the system recognizing finger motions, aw well as positions, and understanding the meaning of different numbers of fingers. For example, the motion of one finger is seen as equivalent to a mouse movement, a finger touch is interpreted as a click, and two fingers touching and moving is seen as scroll command. Pradeep Khosla, professor of electrical and computer engineering and robotics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, says touch technology will proliferate, but not by itself. “When we talk face to face, I make eye gestures, face gestures, and hand gestures, and somehow you interpret them all to understand what I am saying. I think that’s where we are headed” he says. There is room for all these things, and multimodal gestures will be the future.

Touch technology in its many variations os an idea whose time has come. “it’s been around a long time, but traditionally in niche markets. The rise of mobile devices is a big catalyst, because the devices are getting smaller and their screen are getting bigger when the screen covers the entire devices, there is no room for conventional buttons, which makes it necessary to have other types of interact e.g. voice.

Will that be the end of WIMP interface? Tufts University’s Jacob advises users not to discard their keyboards and mice anytime soon. “they really are extremely good”, he says. “WIMP almost completely dislodged the command line interface. The WIMP interface was such a good invention that people just kind of stopped there, but I can’t believe it’s the end road forever”. Buxton agrees, “WIMP os standard interface going back 20-plus years, and all the applications have been built around that, “The challenge is, without throwing the baby out with the bath, how do we reap the benefits of these new approaches while preserving the best parts of the things that exist?”.

CONCLUSION The touch screen interface easier to use to use than other input device. It is useful to make information more easily accessible by allowing users navigate by simple touching the display screen. Touch can suffer from the problem of fingerprints on the display. This can be mitigated by the use of materials with optical coatings designed to reduce the visible effect of the fingerprints oil, such as oleophobic coating used in iPhone 3G, or by reducing screen contact by using a fingernail. The future of touch surface is touchscreen video projectors. The ability to transfer any surface in touchscreen means lower costs, making the technology more cost effective.