Making Better Touch Pads by Including Gestures and Multi-Touch Capability

Touchpads are essential for smartphones and other interactive but not all screen touch devices and capability are the same. Chao-Tung-Lin from Synaptics explained to me at the CES trade show that the capabilities of touch screens devices can determine how the user can interact with the device. Less expensive touch screen pads only allow one or two touch sensing points. Full touch screen pads allow for many (such as 10 fingers). In addition to the capability to detect multiple touch points, touch pads may also be able to recognize specific gestures. A gesture is a sequence of touch pad motion actions that can be recognized. Gestures may be learned and associated with specific application functions. Synaptics has developed enhanced gesture recognition (EGR) that can identify two finger flick, ChiralMotion™, and ChiralRotate™. These gestures can enhance the user experience and provide for more intuitive user interfaces.