"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

Old Tech

[technical_maven]

This is not exactly new technology. Our 2001 Acura MDX used the exact same method. One problem with it was that it tended to become non responsive when it was hit with sunlight... Other than that it worked well.

This is So old...

[j3p0]

This is so old, I'll bet the patents have expired. I'm sure I saw it close to 20 years ago. The "Anonymous" that suggested it was probably the marketing droid that was responsible for the press release (follow the link) that got some lazy editor to post it on Gizmag.

Touchscreens Suck for Situation Awareness!

[Irate Engineer]

Why the push to have touchscreens in the car in the first place? Use of a touchscreen demands that the driver take their eyes off the road, focus on the touchscreen, touch it in the right spot, and then they can return their attention to the road (hopefully without seeing a gaggle of kids, puppies, nuns, or whatever bouncing off the hood of their car).

Why don't we just put all of the car controls in an app on a smartphone and be done with it, making sure that the driver never focuses on the road?

Tactile buttons and knobs are much safer. You can feel for them, identify them by touch, and manipulate them without taking your attention off the road. Good control designs are unambiguous and easy to find and manipulate.