The trend in the field of touch displays continues towards pressure-sensitive touchscreens. These enable a variety of new types of applications for both consumer electronics and industrial touch applications (keyword: HMI = Human Machine Interface). This is because they can be used to trigger different functions.

Even if the main purpose of this display technology in the field of consumer electronics will be different from industrial applications, users can look forward to what will be available in the future for applications in the field of touch-sensitive touchscreens.

For example, pressing virtual buttons or buttons with different intensities could trigger varying actions. It would be conceivable that this could be used to control the scrolling speed of applications. Image sections are enlarged or reduced accordingly or volume controls are operated.

There are already a large number of companies that enrich the market in this area with innovative product ideas. The UK-based company TouchNetix, for example, has been working for some time on the capacitive "pressScreen" technology to realize special industrial touch applications.

The already well-known and widely used projected capacitive touch technology was used as the basis for the capacitive "pressScreen" technology. This is mainly used in the mobile sector and tablet PCs. With the "pressScreen" technology, however, this is extended by an additional functional layer that becomes active as soon as the touch surface is touched and pressed at the same time.

There are a number of business applications for which this type of technology could be of particular interest. Automotive applications, POS terminals or even critical industrial applications where an unintentionally triggered touch would have fatal consequences are conceivable.