Appliance Assembly: Engineers Get Touchy-Feely

from assemblymag.com (emphasis added):

>>“Touch screens are becoming widespread due to the ease of use and intuitive interfaces they enable, which can save time and increase productivity,” says Jennifer Colegrove, Ph.D., director of display technologies at DisplaySearch, a market research firm. “Falling prices have also spurred adoption. Finally, touch screen devices are now perceived as cool and fun.

“Touch screen penetration has been rapidly increasing in mobile phones, portable navigation devices, gaming and other applications,” adds Colegrove. She says the touch screen module market is growing 14 percent annually and will be a $9 billion industry by 2015, more than twice the size of today.

“In the future, people will think of refrigerators and other household appliances more as an electronic device rather than a mechanical device,” predicts Mike Deneen, appliance industry analyst at the Freedonia Group Inc. “During the next decade, we’ll see more consumer electronics manufacturers, such as LG, Panasonic, Samsung and Sharp, become more active in the appliance market, especially in the United States.”

“Capacitive interfaces allow for a seamless interface, are easy to clean, and feature less quality variation than is found in the conventional ‘dome switch under a laminate cover’ that is used in most microwaves,” claims Victor Viegas, CEO of Immersion Corp., which has developed a line of tactile feedback systems called TouchSense. “Capacitive interfaces also allow for the flexibility of having dynamic graphics, such as a screen behind capacitive glass, or fixed images, such as printed labels.

“Since the capacitive sensing is on the rear of the surface, the labels and sensors never wear out, unlike many systems today,” adds Viegas. “Capacitive sensing input has a lifetime operation that is literally infinite.”