‘Light Touch’ turns any flat surface into a touch screen

Light Blue Optics (LBO) announced its first product – Light Touch™ – an interactive projector that turns any flat surface into a 10″ touch screen. Light Touch™ not only frees multimedia content from the confines of the small screen, but also lets users interact with that content in the same way as they expect to on their other hand-held devices – using touch technology. The invite-only product launch will take place tomorrow evening (6 Jan 2010) at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 10) in Las Vegas. Light Touch™ is a reference product and will be made available to Light Blue Optics’ OEM customers and other strategic partners.


Light Touch™ incorporates LBO’s proprietary holographic laser projection technology (HLP™), creating bright, high-quality WVGA resolution video images that are always in focus. HLP™ enables extremely wide throw angles, resulting in large images being created at close proximity to the projector’s aperture. HLP™ can also correct for distortion and optical aberrations in software, enabling novel table-top projection. A unique optical architecture delivers a Class 1 laser safety classification making HLP™ and devices that incorporate it eye safe.

Light Blue Optics Light-Touch

Light Touch™ includes an infra-red touch sensing system that transforms the projected image into a virtual 10″ touch screen. The user can control the projector and interact with multimedia content and applications simply by touching the projected image. Light Touch™ runs Adobe Flash Lite 3.1, leveraging a large existing developer community and enabling the rapid development of innovative applications. WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity enable device to device communication and applications that connect directly to the internet such as social networking, multimedia sharing and electronic point of sale. Light Touch™ is equipped with 2GB of onboard Flash memory and has a Micro SD card slot that supports up to 32GB. Light Touch™ can be wall powered or battery operated, with a run-time of 2 hours before recharging is required.


Light Blue Optics’ CEO, Chris Harris said “At LBO, we believe that today’s consumer is no longer a passive viewer of multimedia content. People expect to engage, interact and share content and our first product enables them to do that in new and exciting ways. The opportunities for Light Touch™ extend beyond consumer electronics into retail spaces, the workplace and the home – profoundly changing the way people interact with multimedia content and the built environment. By enabling such diverse and compelling use cases, LBO aims to become the world’s leading supplier of miniature projection systems.”

Light-Touch

Light Touch™ has been named a CES Innovations Honoree in two categories: Media Players and Personal Electronics.

Display

Type Full-colour holographic laser projection
Projected Image Size 10.1″ diagonal
Brightness Dependent on content: 15 lumens for typical video content,
35 lumens for typical symbology content
Resolution WVGA
Laser Class Class 1 – eye safe under all conditions

Input and Output

Touch Sensor IR optical sensor with multi-touch gesture support
Audio 3.5mm stereo headphone out + internal mono speaker
Video Composite video in (2.5mm socket)
USB USB On-the-Go (micro USB)
WiFi 802.11 b/g with WEP/WPA2 encryption

System

Application Software Adobe Flash Lite 3.1
Internal Storage 2GB Flash memory
External Storage Micro SD card slot (supports up to 32GB)
Battery Internal Li-Ion rechargeable (3600mAh)
Operating Temperature 5 to 35°C

Size and Weight

Dimensions 98 x 35 x 165 mm
Weight 400g

 

Light-Touch

Light Touch

Light Touch

Source: Light Blue Optics