"Infrared Curtain" Brings Touchscreen Technology To Cheap Cars

An anonymous reader writes with news about an affordable way to integrate touch screen technology in any car. "Although touchscreen controls are appearing in the dashboards of an increasing number of vehicles, they're still not something that one generally associates with economy cars. That may be about to change, however, as Continental has announced an "infrared curtain" system that could allow for inexpensive multi-touch functionality in any automobile. The infrared curtain consists of a square frame with a series of LEDs along two adjacent sides, and a series of photodiodes along the other two. Each LED emits a beam of infrared light, which is picked up and converted into an electrical signal by the photodiode located in the corresponding spot on the opposite side of the frame."

Comments

Re:Multi touch while driving?

[PopeRatzo]

But given that I've seen people disappear to reach into the glove box for a CD and fiddle with removing the previous, and change the CD while in heavy traffic

Brother, in my day, I could swap out an 8-track with a beer in one hand and a joint in the other while driving a stick shift on the Eisenhower Expressway at 8:45am. On mexican quaaludes.

Don't look at me like that. I was the designated driver. You should have seen the guys in the back seat.