UltraSense system brings neural processing to smart surfaces through a new generation of multi-mode sensing solutions

2021-12-14 22:11:41 By : Ms. Alina Xu

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Distributed touch sensing architecture allows up to 8 buttons to be easily and cost-effectively integrated under any surface in automobiles, consumer/industrial IoT and home appliances

San Jose, California, December 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - UltraSense Systems today announced the launch of its next-generation multi-mode touch sensing technology and the release of TouchPoint Edge to revolutionize and cost-effectively replace mechanical button clusters in any environment. Surface materials (such as metal, glass, plastic, etc.), and further promote the UI/UX paradigm shift of smart surfaces from mechanical interfaces to digital interfaces.

TouchPoint Edge is a fully integrated system on chip (SoC) that replicates the touch input of mechanical buttons by directly sensing up to eight independent UltraSense ultrasonic + force sensing TouchPoint P transducers. TouchPoint Edge also uses an embedded, always-on Neural Touch Engine (NTE) to distinguish intentional touches from possible unintentional accidental touches, eliminate extreme situations and provide mechanical button input accuracy.

In the next few years, smart surfaces will further change the way we interact with products. The definition of a smart surface is a solid surface with bottom surface illumination to show the user the location of the touch. The UI/UX paradigm shift began with smartphones more than ten years ago, when the mechanical keyboard was removed and you only need to tap the keyboard on the capacitive screen. However, not all smart surfaces are capacitive displays. UltraSense System’s first-generation sensor, TouchPoint Z, continues the paradigm shift by cost-effectively removing mechanical buttons and improving the user experience (UX) of smartphones, electric toothbrushes, home appliances, and car interior ceiling lights.

TouchPoint Edge takes the experience of applications that use many mechanical buttons to a new level. For example, car cockpits have many use cases, including removing mechanical buttons on the steering wheel, central and overhead console controls for HVAC and lighting, door panels for seat and window control, and even embedding in soft surfaces such as leather or even foam seats. Create a new user interface that could not implement mechanical buttons before. Other applications include electrical touch panels, smart locks, security access control panels, elevator button panels and many other applications.

Mo Maghsoudnia, CEO of UltraSense Systems, said: "From the first financing, we were able to develop, validate and provide fully integrated smart surface virtual button solutions to OEMs and ODMs in only three years. "We are the only users. Multi-mode sensor solutions for smart surfaces are designed from the ground up, and neural touch processing is applied to all fields from battery-powered devices to consumer/industrial Internet of Things products and now automobiles. "

The human-machine interface is highly subjective and very complicated under a solid surface, and cannot replicate mechanical button presses. It is not just the applied force greater than the threshold that triggers the surface pressure. When a user applies a force to a mechanical button, the user is applying a time-varying force curve. Due to friction, hysteresis, air gap, and spring characteristics, the mechanical button will produce a large number of nonlinear responses. Therefore, simple piezoresistive or MEMS force-touch strain sensors with some algorithms and one or two-level trigger thresholds cannot effectively and accurately reproduce the user experience of mechanical buttons and eliminate false triggers.

TouchPoint Edge has multi-mode sensing and an embedded neural touch engine, processing on-chip machine learning and neural network algorithms, so it can understand user intent. Like TouchPoint Z, TouchPoint Edge captures the unique pattern of the user pressing the surface material. This data set is then used to train a neural network to learn and recognize the user's pressing pattern, which is different from traditional algorithms that accept a single force threshold. Once the TouchPoint Edge has been trained and optimized for the user's pressing pattern, it can recognize the most natural response when a button is pressed. In addition, the unique sensor array design of the TouchPoint P transducer allows unique multi-channel data sets to be captured in a small local area, just like placing a mechanical button, which greatly improves the performance of neural network replication by pressing the button. The neural touch engine improves the user experience and is better enhanced by closely integrating with TouchPoint P's proprietary sensor design to provide the best performance. Finally, integrating the neural touch engine into TouchPoint Edge is a game changer for system efficiency. Compared with offloading the same system settings to an external ultra-low power microcontroller, the execution speed of neural processing can be increased by 27 times. Power consumption is reduced by 80%.

IDC Research Manager Nina Turner said: "The challenge of replacing traditional mechanical buttons with sensor-based solutions requires technologies such as solid surface lighting, ultrasonic or capacitive sensing, and force sensing. "But these sensors alone can cause false alarms. Integrating machine learning with these touch sensors brings a new level of intelligence to the touch sensor market and will benefit a wide range of devices and markets. " 

Main features of TouchPoint Edge

Main features of TouchPoint P

The TouchPoint Edge evaluation kit using the TouchPoint P transducer will be sampled to some customers next month, and production samples will be provided in the first quarter of 2022.

UltraSense Systems was founded in 2018 and is headquartered in San Jose, California. By creating a multi-mode touch sensing solution that enables smart surfaces with precise and highly localized characteristics, it is transforming smartphones, consumer/industrial Internet of Things, household appliances, and automobiles UI/UX paradigm. , No button interface. Its TouchPoint product line enables customers to provide seamless touch HMIs on hard and soft surfaces, including metal, glass, plastic, wood, and leather. To date, the company has raised $24 million from investors such as Robert Bosch Ventures, Artiman Ventures, Abies Ventures, Sony Innovation Fund, and Asahi Kasei Corporation.

Contact: Nicole Kangli 831-713-9076 [Email protection]

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