The Product Development Process Behind Holotouch

Special Product Development Insight into one of our Technology Showcase participants: HoloTouch Technology

HoloTouch touchless, holographic HMI technology® was conceived by Doug McPheters while writing an as yet unpublished financial and techno-thriller.

Once patents for HoloTouch technology began to issue, he assigned them to HoloTouch, Inc. (www.holotouch.com).  HoloTouch, Inc. ramped up commercialization.  Its lines of business include licensing the technology for use in specific devices and offering design, engineering and manufacturing services needed by licensees to develop products based on this innovative technology.  The latter was suggested when it became apparent few companies want to re-deploy existing resources to learn a new technology and even fewer are familiar with integration of holograms with electronics.

The principal components of every device using HoloTouch technology are simple and inexpensive:
1.    a hologram containing images of what would otherwise be the keys or buttons of an electronic or electro-mechanical device;
2.    a light behind the hologram, usually a simple LED, to reproduce the hologram’s image so that it floats in the air in front of the device;
3.    a sensor, usually infrared, to detect when a user passes a finger through the reproduced holographic image(s); and
4.    circuits to convey commands to the device.

Widely patented HoloTouch technology enhances a broad range of devices: automotive, aviation, consumer electronics, factory floor, kiosk, medical and military, just to name a few.  Advantages of using HoloTouch technology include intuitive, touchless operation, no moving parts to fail under use or abuse and nothing to actually touch, which offers superior hygiene in a germ-ridden world.

To focus attention of potential licensees on the advantages of HoloTouch technology and provide a reference for early adopters, the company designed and engineered a compact, 3” x 5”  touchless switch, SFS408. This new switch fits into a standard NEC wall box, works on 110 or 240 VAC and powers devices drawing up to 8 amps.
Design and engineering of this new switch required development of sophisticated holograms with:

• Angles of reconstruction (measured in relation to path of the reproducing light source and normal to plane of the hologram) of about 80 degrees.  Conventional holograms have angles of reconstruction of only about 45 degrees.
• Positioning of the reproducing light source very close to the surface of the hologram.  Using conventional hologram recording techniques, a reproducing light source might be positioned about ten times as far from the hologram compared with devices using our enhanced hologram recording methods.

With these novel hologram recording techniques, any device using HoloTouch technology can be sufficiently compact and small to be easily used and commercially viable.   Applied to surface relief  holograms, these techniques offer accurate copies in volume at very low per-unit cost.
SFS408, operated by simply passing a finger through a holographic image floating freely in the air, has been tested at Greenwich Hospital in Greenwich, Connecticut, and is presently being used at Yale-New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut to open doors without touching anything.  Unlike other touchless switches, the SFS408 shows users where to “touch” a holographic image floating freely in its central cavity in order to open doors in hygiene-critical facilities and other places where people don’t want to share whatever resides on mechanical controls.  This new switch forms the basis for a commercial line of just one iteration of products using HoloTouch technology.

To encourage adoption of its technology, HoloTouch, Inc. offers complimentary trials of demonstration units of this touchless switch to qualified OEMS. In addition, the company offers short-term prototype development licenses for specific applications for a nominal fee.
As SFS408 demonstrates, customizing HoloTouch technology to specific devices is relatively simple and inexpensive, the latter depending on how the desired HMI is intended to look, feel and function.”

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Don’t miss this year’s Technology Showcase at PDMA’s Global Conference on Product Innovation Management this October 16-20th in Orlando, FL.

The Technology Showcase  is an on-site marketplace of new ideas and pre-commercialized emerging technologies that are experiential and have a huge “WOW” factor. The Showcase will be incorporated into the conference program so attendees can learn from and interact with the innovations that will be helping to shape our future. Our goal is to engage in a way that both amazes and provides useful insights into innovative solutions and opportunities that might apply to business today.

See other Technology Showcase Participants

PDMA Conference Homepage

More information on HoloTouch technology