Touch-free Touch Pad

Source:  Tech-On

There have been game controllers where the fingers, hands or feet are read by sensors as you try to control a game character’s movements.  In the arcade, these are quite propular, and there have been some manufacturers who have put these game controllers to market.

These hands-free game controllers have included one game controller for Mortal Kombat/Virtua Fighter, where an octagonal pad is laid on the floor and the player is in the center and moving across real space.  There has also been one controller which was a desktop model where you move your hands about a space of about a foot cube (1 foot wide by 1 foot breadth by 1 foot in height).  It seems that these were not that successful as no competitor came out to slug it out in this niche game controller market.

Now comes a touch-free or hands-free touch pad from Alps Electric Co., Ltd. of Japan, where you can control the computer much like a regular touch pad, but without touching the controller; the fingers hover about three inches above the touchpad.  The technology uses noise suppression and two capacitance sensors on the sides of the regular touch pad.

Supposedly, one use would be for devices in a dirty environment.  The company does, however, noted that the device is still under development and that it still malfunctions.  If and when the non-contact touchpad, or its variants, does get into production, there are a whole lot of uses for a  non-contact controller.

My creativity escapes me at the moment, and I cannot think of any application or environmental condition where I would rather use a non-contact touch pad over a regular touchpad.  I do appreciate, however, that touch devices have proven to lose their touch sensitivity with regular use.  If the sensor prove to be more ruggen and more resilient over time, I can see that this would be quite useful, indeed.