Microchip Technology Inc., a provider of microcontroller, mixed-signal, analog and Flash-IP solutions, today announced the industry’s first development kit for integrated 2D projective capacitive touch (PCAP) and 3D gesture recognition on displays – the 2D/3D Touch and Gesture Development Kit (DV102014). The kit will provide designers easy access to Microchip’s patented 2D and 3D GestIC sensing technology, allowing them to easily integrate 2D multi-touch and 3D hand gesture recognition into their display applications. The use of electric-field based technology enables hand and finger gestures to now be tracked both on the display surface as well as above at a distance of up to 20 cm. In addition, the development kit provides an easy-to-use, “out-of-the-box” experience that requires no code development. Parameterization, diagnostics and optional settings are done through Aurea 2.0, a free downloadable graphical user interface (GUI).
The 2D/3D Touch and Gesture Development Kit features Microchip’s latest PCAP controller, MTCH6303, with the MGC3130 3D gesture controller. It includes an eight-inch transparent touch sensor to enable rapid prototyping for widely available displays. The MTCH6303 provides multi-touch coordinates with a five-finger scan rate of 100 Hz. In addition, it has an integrated multi-finger surface gesture suite which makes it a good fit both for Operating System (OS) driven applications as well as embedded systems without an operating system.
The MGC3130 with Microchip’s award-winning GestIC technology was the first electrical-field-based 3D gesture controller to offer low-power, precise, and robust hand position tracking at 200 Hz. In addition, GestIC technology utilizes advanced Hidden Markov Models to ensure that the recognition rate for 3D hand gestures is above 95%. Free-space hand gestures are universal, hygienic and easy to learn, making them ideal for display applications.
“Microchip has been an industry leader in developing gesture-based technologies since the launch of GestIC,” said Dr. Roland Aubauer, director of Microchip’s Human-Machine Interface Division, “GestIC technology is a low complexity solution for adding 3D features to display applications that combine seamlessly with 2D PCAP multi-touch designs. Designers now have an easy way to combine 2D and 3D user interface technologies in order to build innovative and easy to use applications.”