Opportunities for multi-touch sensors are becoming more plentiful, and they are expanding outside of the display and touch screen fields. For example, if retailers could implement floor-based sensors, they could study what products their customers were browsing. A steering wheel could be used as a track pad that can operate a wide variety of functions. Security applications could also be developed.

Charles Hendee, chief technology officer and co-founder of Tactonic Technologies, LLC, sees opportunities for multi-touch sensors outside of the conventional display market. For several years, Hendee worked as a research scientist under Professor Ken Perlin at the Media Research Lab in NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, where he was primarily involved in exploring the physical modalities and interaction of Human–Computer Interaction (HCI). This has led to the formation of Tactonic Technologies.

“Prof. Perlin and one of his students came up with a multi-touch technology, which they spun out into a start-up company, where I joined as a mechanical engineer, and it was acquired less than a year later,” Hendee said. “Through our work at the start-up and our research in the area, we realized that there were some applications spaces/markets that would be well served by multi-touch sensing where there did not seem to be many good solutions.

“Specifically, it was not clear that there was a very good solution to producing very large scale multi-touch sensors,” Hendee added. “Thus, our goal was to create a technology that could do just that, such that it would be versatile and economically feasible. By fall 2010, we had come up with a solution to producing large scale multi-touch sensors, and Tactonic Technologies was born.

“After we had what seemed like an appropriate solution, we brought in a mutual friend, Gerry Seidman, to determine the feasibility of creating a company to commercialize and market the technology, after which we formed the company with Gerry Seidman as CEO and myself as CTO,” Hendee said.

There is a wide range of markets that could implement multi-touch sensors. Hendee noted that Tactonic Technologies, LLC, is currently focusing on automotive interior interactions and mobile device peripherals, and is exploring other opportunities.

“By then end of the summer, much of our focus will shift to exploring the uses of our technology in floor-based applications, such as for tracking users in a space based on their gait and other biometric features that we are able to extract from our sensors,” Hendee added. “Uses include gathering market intelligence in retail environments and a variety of security applications.”

Hendee noted that Tactonic’s sensors have several key advantages, including the ability to gather data in a cost effective manner.

“Primarily because of the method that we use to acquire forces applied to the surface of our sensors, we are able to obtain very rich data while simultaneously drastically under-sampling, thereby reducing materials and manufacturing costs and reducing computational complexity,” Hendee reported. “Thus we can produce large area sensors very cost effectively.

“These sensors can be tiled together such that the signal across contiguous (or adjacent) sensors is continuous and without loss of signal,” Hendee added. “In other words, we can cost effectively cover very large areas, such as floors, walls and tabletops with a sensing surface that can detect most any applied force, be it from fingers and hands, feet, a passive stylus or even a coffee mug. While developing this technology, we have doggedly maintained cost effectiveness as one of our top priorities.

Hendee noted that one of Tactonic Technologies’ major manufacturing issues is producing large area printed electronic sensors.

“This is a concern because if we are looking at covering very large areas – in some cases millions of square feet – being able to produce large tiles will ultimately reduce over all per square foot costs,” Hendee said. “I have often heard manufacturers talk about theoretical maximum sizes, but when pressed, 22”x16” is about the largest active area most companies are actually able to produce. Our primary manufacturing partner has been able to push that up to 25” x 30”, and we are still looking at ways to improve the process and increase the size.”

Tactonic Technologies’ ability to quickly design and develop products is proving to be a huge advantage for its customers.

“We maintain close relationships to manufacturers and material suppliers, so that we can leverage existing manufacturing infrastructure without adding capital expenditures,” Hendee added. “Our company and our technology is built to quickly design and develop prototypes, and to be able to move swiftly towards large scale production for our clients’ products.”

As a result, the market has enthusiastically welcomed Tactonic Technologies’ designs, which is spurring further expansion.

“Reception has been overwhelming,” Hendee said. “We are working on developing products right now with several companies, and we are working on proof of concept project with several more. In fact, we are working on expanding the company in order to meet the tremendous demand to help integrate our technology into existing and new products with our clients.”

Understandably, Hendee has high expectations for Tactonic’s large-scale multi-touch sensors.

“We fully expect to have licensed and to continue to license our technology to a variety of markets, including device interaction, automotive interiors, impact and trauma detection, and gait analysis for various industries (medical, market intelligence and security applications),” Hendee said. “That said, we expect to continue to build our software platform to better understand and analyze the biometric data that we acquire from the floor tile sensors to help our clients better leverage that information to improve the experience of their customers as we continue to build Tactonic Technologies and foster interaction everywhere.”