Human-Machine Interfaces Should Be Touchy

In a show of corporate pride, Atmel announced last week that LG Electronics Mobile had chosen to use its maXTouch touchscreen controllers in the forthcoming 4G, Android-powered G-Slate tablet.

Atmel's maXTouch technology provides a relatively fast and responsive, capacitive, multitouch solution, which enables a number of built-in gestures and the possibility of advanced human-to-tablet interaction.

Atmel basically offers three products in the maXTouch family, including the mXT224, which, according to the company, is a 224-node single-chip controller designed for touch phones and relatively small tablets or netbooks with up to 7-in. screens; the mXT616 that provides (as its name implies) 616 nodes for 10.1-in. screens using three chips; and the 1,368-node mXT1386 four-chip solution, which will manage screens up to 15.6 inches in diameter.

Touchscreens will soon be ubiquitous

Electronics engineers working on consumer devices may wish to pay attention to Amtel's maXTouch and similar solutions as anecdotal data suggests that users are beginning to expect more human-machine interaction and much more “touchscreen” ubiquity.

Recently, a friend told me about an interaction with his son, who is a child of about eight. The boy walked up to a laptop that his father was holding. After looking over Dad's shoulder for a few minutes, the child reached for the screen and pressed a button with his finger. The laptop, as you would expect, did nothing. The child tried again, and then said, “I think your computer is broken.”

Armando Roggio