EEWebPULSE_2013_i0082.pdf

EE Web PULSE TABLE OF CONTENTS

Neeraj Pendse

ELO TOUCH SOLUTIONS

Interview with Neeraj Pendse - Senior Manager, Product Management

Featured Products

The Evolution of Touch

BY ELO TOUCH SOLUTIONS

Why the once-futuristic touchscreen interface is becoming an essential edition to any new

generation of devices.

Apps-based Programming Approach Speeds

XMC4000 Development

BY GEORG HUBA WITH INFINEON

How Infineon’s Dave™3 app helps programmers insert application-oriented software compo-

nents into their project as well as configure and connect those components.

Product Overview: Rigol DM-3068 Digital

Multimeter

RTZ - Return to Zero Comic

Visit www.eeweb.com

EE Web PULSE INTERVIEW

Neeraj

Pendse

Elo Touch

Solutions

EE Web | Electrical Engineering Community

Visit www.eeweb.com

EE Web PULSE INTERVIEW

Can you tell us about your

work experience before

your role as Global Product

Line Manager at Elo Touch

Solutions?

“We’ve had

significant

technology

inventions

during our 40-

year history that

have established

our value

proposition

and our

leadership in

the touchscreen

space.”

My first professional role was to

design high speed interconnects

for semiconductor chips – but then

I took a turn into the business world.

I came to Elo Touch Solutions in

2010 from A.T. Kearney, a strategy

consulting firm. As a strategy

consultant I spent three years on

the road working on a broad variety

of projects. One was to restructure

a California food processing plant

facing closure to make it profitable.

Another involved the restructure of

the Finance function at a very large

insurance conglomerate. In a third

project, I developed a go-to-market

strategy for a Japanese consumer

electronics manufacturer who was

experiencing lackluster growth in

the U.S. At Elo, the role of a Product

Manager is to act as a “mini-GM,”

which requires an understanding

of all sides of the business. So,

my strategy work at A.T. Kearney

has really helped me to meet the

expectations of our business.

Then, suddenly, a lot of people took

interest.

Menlo Park, California. In the spring

of 2013, we are going to move to

a new headquarters in Milpitas,

California, which is about 15 or 20

miles down the freeway from here.

that I’m responsible for, and is our

fastest growing technology.

the display. It essentially becomes

an accessory to the display. This

requires us to do system design as

well. We also offer built in remote

management features to allow

customers to go online and turn

their display off because store

number XXY called and said that

something’s happening and they

want to re-set. We have built these

kinds of remote interfaces, and we

are enhancing them.

our products in more ways than just

touch.

Could you give us a quick

overview of Elo Touch

Solutions?

Fourth, we have a component

business, which basically sells

licensing, but also sells things like

a piece of glass with components

on it that an original equipment

manufacturer could take and

place on a display. That display

could be part of a control panel, a

gaming system or a machine on a

manufacturing line somewhere.

So what was Elo Touch Solutions

doing in those 40 years? Well,

Elo touchscreens have been in

commercial applications for a

very long time. Most notably, our

touchscreens have been in point-

of-sale terminals at your grocery

stores, check-in kiosks, ATMs, and

gift registries. We’ve had significant

technology inventions during our

40-year history that have established

our value proposition and our

leadership in the touchscreen

space.

Could you tell us a little more

about the touch technology

that you use?

Elo Touch Solutions is a privately

held company. We have around

400 employees. The company was

founded in the early 1970s out of the

Oak Ridge National Laboratories,

where the founders came up with

the idea of being able to touch a

screen. This was part of some other

work they were doing—such as

digitizing information—and this was

an offshoot of that. This inventive

moment led us to be one of the

true pioneers of touchscreens on

displays. Since the early 70s, and for

about 40 years since then, nobody

really cared about touchscreens.

When it comes to products,

do you just have products

that you sell, or do you sell

technology for other display

manufacturers?

Our interactive digital signage

market focus has been on large

format devices, which means that

projected capacitive, which is the

predominant technology for small

consumer smart phone devices,

may not be suitable because of cost.

For example, if I have a 70-inch

screen, it’ll cost thousands of dollars

to make a projected capacitive

touchscreen.

The answer is “yes” on both counts.

If we step back a bit and talk

about the company itself, we have

four product lines. Three of the

product lines are system products,

which include touchscreens and

touchcomputers. The third product

in the systems category is interactive

digital signage. This is the product

We are also working on additional

types of interactivity. In the near

future, we’ll be launching an NFC/

RFID-based interactive display, so

that users will not only have touch,

but also a proximity tag reader.

That way, users can interact with

Depending on the product, we offer

components outside the display as

well. For example, in the interactive

digital signage world, all of our

displays offer an optional integrated

computing module, which enables

a computer to slide in and mate with

Where are you located?

We are presently headquartered in

One of the things that we always

communicate to our customers (as

EE Web | Electrical Engineering Community

Visit www.eeweb.com

EE Web PULSE INTERVIEW

a value proposition) is the number

of touch technologies we offer in

our products. A lot of these are

technologies that we have invented.

In our large screen interactive

digital signage, we use our surface

acoustic wave (SAW) technology,

which is very reliable and also a

key Elo invention. When we sell this

technology as just a piece of glass or

a component plate (when there is no

display attached to it), we warranty

the screen for a decade. That length

of time is somewhat of an unheard of

warranty in any kind of electronics

today. It suggests that our surface

How does the surface acoustic

wave technology work?

product that just keeps working and

working.

Could you tell us a little

more about the webcam

implemented in this

technology?

It’ll also tell you basic demographic

information. The technology to do

this is available from Intel, so we

work with them to get them to qualify

our camera. You can download an

application from Intel.com today

that can give you these statistics.

seeing an ad that is interesting and

saying to you, “I should remember

that next time I go to the store.” So

with this in mind, the next time you

go to the store, you ask yourself

what the ad was that interested you,

and somehow you have to connect

all these things and I think that’s

a very interesting technological

challenge in the future. Touch-

enabled mobility could be the real

glue in this challenge.

It’s actually very interesting. There

is a very low-energy ultrasonic wave

that is on the outside surface of the

glass. We’ve placed that wave using

a piezoelectric excitation device,

and when you touch the screen,

you absolve the ultrasonic energy

slightly. Any soft object that comes

in contact with the glass will absolve

the energy, and on the other side

of the glass, we have vectors that

detect this absolvetion. Because

of this, you end up with is a very

Do you have interactive digital

signage products that you

sell to people that are only

interested in buying three or

four?

The webcam is in the display

because when you think about any

kind of public application for a

touchscreen, it’s showing some sort

of general public interest message

or marketing sales promotion.

Somebody at headquarters is

driving all of those messages, and

they really want to know the impact

of their messages. Today, there are

huge business models already in

place to figure out how many people

are watching particular shows on

TV. Marketers really want to know

the impact of their promotions.

There are technologies available

now that can do that visually, which

is an important reason why we

developed the webcam. It’s not very

different from a typical camera that

you can buy, but it’s something we

made for our displays that matches

our display designs. The camera

is able to look at how many people

are in its view, how many people are

actually looking at the screen, and

how many people walk by without

noticing, so it will give you that ratio.

What challenges do you

foresee for Elo Touch

Solutions?

Given that the interactive digital

signage product line is only two

years old, I think we’ve garnered

quite a bit of credibility in a short

amount of time. We have products

out in the market that you can buy

in any quantity through our channel

If you look at the retail stores today,

there are some categories of retail

that are generating more sales from

online stores, like books. However,

there are some categories that are

going to stay offline. Consumer

companies have been doing

research on which categories will

end up being bought online in the

future and which categories will

stay in the store. So how do you

bridge the gap to deliver both a

consistent online and offline brand

experience? Can I go to the display

in a store and get suggestions and

take them back home with me? A

lot of people have created solutions

that will bridge the gaps, but they’re

all proprietary solutions. There isn’t

an industry standard like Bluetooth

in this realm. Imagine watching TV,

“One of the things that we always

communicate to our customers

(as a value proposition) is the

number of touch technologies

we offer in our products. A

lot of these are technologies

that we have invented.”

acoustic wave technology is a very

reliable technology that is suitable

for large formats.

reliable touch surface. It has no

coatings or copper tracks (or any

kind of conducting material) on it, so

it is very cost-effective compared to

capacitive technology. The reason

why it is so reliable is that there is

nothing to erode when you touch it.

partners. These are products that

are Elo branded and are fully

functional displays, so what you get

in the box is a commercial-grade

display that is integrated with a

touchscreen and also with a slide-

in computer module that you buy

separately. If you wanted to obtain

and display an interactive poster in

a public environment like a hotel

lobby or college campus, it would

basically be ready to go, from the

hardware end of it. We only recently

introduced this innovative fully

functional display and it’s already

taken off in the market.

For more information about Elo Touch Solutions,

visit their website at:

In even larger technologies, such as

70 inches and beyond, we are finding

that optical touch is very interesting.

Optical touch technology involves

a camera that is mounted on the

four corners of the screen. The

cameras look in a plane parallel to

the surface of the glass and can see

a finger coming. Because there are

four cameras, they can capture a lot

of movement and we are offering

the optical touch technology on our

products as well.

www.elotouch.com

The surface acoustic wave

technology has really been the

dominant technology of the

commercial touch world. We took

this technology and applied it to

digital signage and are finding that

customers really like it because

there are very few components

and it’s just an extremely reliable

EE Web | Electrical Engineering Community

Visit www.eeweb.com

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: