CompuTouch Company Profile

CompuTouch AS was established in 1997, based on the idea of using a third communication channel between man
and machine, i.e. to transfer of useful information via our sense of feeling or touch - receiving tactile information.

CompuTouch has so far been an invention-oriented company, concentrating on product development. However, the
status of development has now reached a level that enables us to start talking to potential industrial partners in selected segments for the use of our generic haptic technology. (Haptic is the common expression that combines the touch-input with the information we get when we feel the reaction from the use of our muscles).
The company is located in Asker, close to Oslo, but the people working with CompuTouch come from different countries in Europe. We also should mention that CompuTouch 15th of February 2001 won the national “Rosing Creativity Award” from Den Norske Dataforening (the Norwegian IT Association).

 CompuTouch has been able to operate with very low overhead costs through using expert consultants and companies. Only in September 2002 had the tactile motor development come so far that a full time MD was employed to actively follow up research projects and look for partners/companies who require our haptic technology in their products.
Active participation in National as well as EU projects has/will finance much of our development in 2002 and 2003 as the financial overview shows.  To date all tactile motor production has been for demonstration and project use.

Our focus is to advance haptic and tactile technology so it will become a main stream user interface.
We believe we should assist device and application manufacturers enhance their products with this new technology.
We have the theoretical and practical experience to help product manufacturers to build robotic assemly lines, and our prototype tactile motor construction has been designed for such assembly.

We shall continue to work with research institutions which are focussing on incorporating tactile (haptic) technology in new areas. We are at the start of a new era which we believe will radically change our interaction with computer driven systems/virtual reality, hence our participation in such research projects.

To date most funding has come from research and development grants, which have enabled us to bring our technology from a prototype to the pre-industrialization stage. The tactile motors are now compact and robust and the electronics and driver software ready for production.

Our strategy is to continue our research project participation in order to remain at the leading edge of the technology,
and initially to find one or two niche product manufacturers whose product would be significantly enhanced through adding tactile technology. Small production runs can be manufactured by CompuTouch, but for larger volumes we see lisensing of our technology as the best solution for most partners. Through a step wise refinement of the robotic manufacturing prosess we anticipate that the final production cost of a standard tactile motor can be as low as
10-25€ including amortisation costs. The production cost of our new SMT electronics which drives three tactile motors
is today 30€.

The potential of haptic technology is enormous from low volume high tech applications (data mining, telemedicen etc.)
to for example a high volume ergonometric mouse where tactile feedback facilitates user reflex responses to select without intense physical steering often causing RSI. Think also of the world
for the visually impaired who with a multi tactile motor mouse might Ñfeelì the pictures on the screen and seconds later “read” the text along side. Or the driver, pilot, crane operator who will use a tactile communication channel while his
eyes and ears are 100% focussed outside of his vehicle.

I hope this introduction has whetted your appetite and you will find the next pages describing the company and its technology interesting.

For further information please send an email to hans.steller@computouch.no

Brief Product History

The CompuTouch Technology is based on the premise that to-days man/machine communication can be significantly enhanced through using a 3rd communication channel. The initial catalyst for the idea came from Warren Brodey and was constructed by Hans Kristian Holmen. Two tactile devices were connected via a communication line providing two deaf users with remote contact through simultaneously transmitting and feeling small physical tactile movements.

The excitement these two “users” exhibited at being able to “communicate” was the catalyst to move forward and in
1997 the company CompuTouch AS was founded.

The first business case evolved around the development of a Tactile computer mouse where an inexpensive standard Microsoft mouse was equipped with a tactile motor mounted in the left mouse button, and electronics to drive it in the mouse itself. Software was developed allowing users to generate haptic movement patterns and then assign these to standard Windows cursor events. This enabled applications to give instantaneous, ergonometric tactile feedback to the user allowing him to “feel” window edges as raised lines which are crossed, or different “buttons”, “handles” and cursor shapes as unique movement patterns. It is thought that users with mouse RSI problems can be helped to click on the desired point through spinal reflex actions. Similarly the visually impaired users could be helped to ìfeelî their cursor location on the screen.

Virtual Reality (VR) is another area where the surface of the tactile motor is continuously adjusted to follow the surface contours of a 3D object. We have worked very closely with the Department of Applied Mathematics at SINTEF, the Norwegian Institute for Applied Research, on two 3D object and haptic related research projects. We currently represent the haptic technology for the EU MUVVII (Multi User Virtual Interactive Interface) 5th framework research project
(2001-2004), which combines 3D vision, spatial sound, force feedback and tactile information.

The initial development was financed through small private shareholders who believed in the idea, but under estimated the time to market and revenue. In 2000 it became clear that a small company such as CompuTouch could only develop their technology rapidly in partnership(s) with larger global companies who already had their sales and support organisations in place and could enhance their product with haptic technology. It was also evident that the notion of ”haptic” needed to be spread and further developed in the research community. Thus in 2000 - 2002 National, International and EU research moneys were sought and approved securing a major part of the necessary financing through 2003. At the same time a few industrial partners were selected and approached to evaluate the development of our technology in their products. Though there was genuine and considerable interest, the economic downturn in 2001-2002 and the fact we still needed further motor production refinements meant that no income bringing contracts were signed.

Through our research grant income and associated projects, we have now considerably enhanced the tactile motor of 2000 and completely redesigned the driving electronics onto small SMT printed circuit cards.
In other words we are now really ready to select one or two lower volume partners.