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LCD Screen With Embedded Optical Sensors

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Mon Sep 03, 2007 02:22 PM
from the the-screen-that-looks-back dept.
Displays Hardware
dk3nn3dy writes "Sharp has developed a LCD display with optical sensors built into the displays pixels, without requiring a touch-sensitive film to be bonded on top of the regular screen. The optical sensor is similar to that used in scanners, allowing for notes or business cards to be scanned by the screen itself. As the optical recognition technology is built into the pixels it also simplifies tactile recognition based on simultaneously touching multiple points. Future uses include fingerprint authentication on the screen of your mobile phone or PDA, or iPhone style touch recognition. Volume production will start next spring."
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Submission: LCD screen with Embedded Optical Sensors by dk3nn3dy (722733)
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  • Is it true? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 03 2007, @02:27PM (#20454845)
    Future uses include fingerprint authentication on the screen

    I heard development was funded almost entirely by Windex.

    • Future uses include fingerprint authentication on the screen
      Not to mention the various manufacturers of gummi bears.
    • What about Apple? They filed a patent a year or so back on a type of display that had a camera element on each pixel (apparently the current iMac isn't enough like Orwell's telescreen for them).

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by tomhudson (43916)

        We'll have to stop with the "In Soviet Russia computer monitors YOU!" jokes.

        Schizophrenics will finally be able to say "See - it IS watching me!"

        Of course, since they're more sensitive to IR than to visible wavelengths, you can defeat them by pointing a heat lamp at them. You'll still be able to see the picture, but "they" won't be able to see you.

      • A little to much like 1984 for my tastes although it seems this technology is pretty cool. It's all in how it's used. I wonder if they could implement this in screens without users knowing. That is the scariest part I think. Still, hiding a camera in a standard tv wouldn't be that hard so no huge deal unless cable companies begin giving televisions away for nothing or something suspicious like that.

  • Focus length? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Chairboy (88841) on Monday September 03 2007, @02:27PM (#20454851) Homepage
    I wonder if this technology could be used to two-way displays? Instead of a discrete camera, just have the whole screen be an interferometry based "camera". Video phone where you're looking at each other instead of slightly off to one side...

    • Re:Focus length? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by hedwards (940851) on Monday September 03 2007, @02:39PM (#20455045)
      Unlikely, the lens technology is almost assuredly limited to focusing just a mm or so beyond the front glass. This might be the start of that ability, but I would expect for the video phone to arrive before that does. People by and large just don't want to have to worry about their appearance when calling or emailing.

      I would be very curious to hear how they are planning to deal with the fingerprints and scratching that will almost assuredly occur.
      • Most decent mobiles have a video camera mounted on the front these days anyway.. stills camera on the back, video cam on the front. Not that I've ever used it of course.

        My phone also has a touchscreen, which doesn't have any scratches that I've noticed, and the fingerprints just wipe off... we already have all the technology for loads of cool stuff that is supposedly 'future' tech. We just don't have the right pricing schemes.. stupid greedy telcos..
    • If scientists can construct a neural network that can simulate the infra-red vision of snake [physorg.com], then doing the same with the display of a LCD shouldn't be that difficult. Each light sensor element will pick up a sample of light in a conical or rectangular shape. It would just be a matter of deblurring the image [physorg.com].
      • The real issue is how small the cone where you get a sharp image would be. In the edges of the screen, you don't have enough data to deblur (you would need pixels beyond the edge to get the full information). You might realize that you can indeed resolve quite fine details, but only for a few pixels in the absolute center, relying on all other pixels to remove the adjacent noise.

  • Queue the Big-Brother/Orwell freaks in..... (Score:4, Funny)

    by B5_geek (638928) on Monday September 03 2007, @02:27PM (#20454853)
    Aside from the obvious concerns; this sounds like a great tech that could allow ....

    shit everything I can think of is evil..

    sorry. =)

    • Re:Queue the Big-Brother/Orwell freaks in..... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by suv4x4 (956391) on Monday September 03 2007, @02:34PM (#20454961)
      Aside from the obvious concerns; this sounds like a great tech that could allow ....
      shit everything I can think of is evil..
      sorry. =)

      Right, just like your keyboard allows you to share your most personal and private info to the world. But you just won't, how about that.

      Also: it works as a scanner, not a camera. It sees in focus only what's directly placed on top of the screen.

      Good for barcode scanning, touchscreens, or portable scanner. As well as a bunch of other quite cool and "non-evil" uses.
        • Yes, but how many of you already have webcams attached to your desktops/laptops? How is this technology any different? Hard-wire a "on" LED to the optical sensors and you've got a foolproof protection. Some hacker turns your "camera" on? No sweat, the power LED lights up like a Christmas tree. Almost all webcams have it, and my MacBook Pro does also.

          • How is this technology any different?
            It is different in that the webcam can actually take a picture of you, while this can't.
            • I was assuming that the doomsayers getting all up in arms are right, and that this technology can be adapted to give useful images... But you're right, there is absolutely nothing to worry about. Though... A webcam embedded behind the LCD would be very cool, and eliminate the current problem of "I'm talking to you but I'm not looking at you".
          • What's worse was the old UNIX problem with anyone able to access the microphone and speakers on a remote machine. Had a lot of fun in the office with that one, back in the day. Also, since you could by default run apps on the local console in X, we'd throw up screensavers and xview -display 0:0 various images (like Mike Tyson biting the ear off).

            There's nothing better to do with a $300,000 SGI Onyx than to have it meow at you every once in a while.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by cellocgw (617879)
          Even with it's current capability, I'd suppose various image disgrognification algorythms could discern something that isn't pressed to the screen.
          No it couldn't, any more than a blank sheet of photographic paper could produce an image (all by itself). Simply put: unless there is a lens, or a pinhole (Google for things like "pinhole camera"), or as someone mentioned, each detector element has a drastically limited field of view, like a dragonfly eye, you won't get an image. Each element in this case just

    • Winston sprang to attention in front of the telescreen, upon which the image of a youngish woman, scrawny but muscular, dressed in tunic and gym-shoes, had already appeared.

      'Arms bending and stretching!' she rapped out. 'Take your time by me. One, two, three, four! One, two, three, four! Come on, comrades, put a bit of life into it! One, two, three, four! One, two, three, four!'

      [......]

      'Smith!' screamed the shrewish voice from the telescreen. '6079 Smith W.! Yes, you! Bend lower, please! You can do

      • Ironically, perhaps, because of a certain commercial 20 years ago, Apple patented a similar technology a few years ago.

        Although, the first piece of media that this brought to my mind wasn't 1984, but that news sketch from The Kentucky Fried Movie... I guess I'm not as socially conscious as you.

    • Aside from the obvious concerns; this sounds like a great tech that could allow ....

      shit everything I can think of is evil..

      BTW name one "evil" thing this technology allows, which isn't allowed in theory by the 3G phones.
  • I recall a ID-10T report about a user holding up a document to the screen so the "Techie" could see it on-line or something to that effect. Sounds like that story will become anachronistic .

  • But... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Unique2 (325687) on Monday September 03 2007, @02:32PM (#20454941)
    How do I see the screen to click the 'Scan' button when I've got the document in front of it?
    • the screen could be wider than a standard piece of paper

      the scan could be on a delay, where you hit your button, wait 5 ticks, and scan

      the scan could be initiated by covering the screen with the paper (indicating to the scanning program that you have placed the paper in the optimum scanning position)

      you could hit the scan button on your keyboard ... just for a start...
      • Going by current UI design and the generally usability of some applications I wouldn't be surprised if you had to click on one button to start the scan and another to stop it, Oh and removing the page before you stop it would mean you had to start again..

  • Apple Patent (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xirtam_work (560625) on Monday September 03 2007, @02:35PM (#20454967)
    I'm sure I've seen an Apple Inc. patent for a device that does this. It might even have been posted here on Slashdot.

    Hopefully these sensors only work up close like a scanner, rather than like a webcam.

  • Does this mean us blonde folks.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by AmazingRuss (555076) on Monday September 03 2007, @02:37PM (#20455015)
    ...will no longer be ridiculed for using whiteout on the screen?
    • Nope. That's very much a part of the popular lexicon, just like "blondes have more fun." You're stuck with it.

  • monkey (Score:5, Funny)

    by Inmatarian (814090) on Monday September 03 2007, @02:39PM (#20455039)
    This reminds me of that old 1995 email joke about having a scanner in your screen, and you could hold your face up to it and it would take your picture. Of course, all it did was load a picture of a monkey and said this was you.
  • All you need is the right software to access it. Fortunately, there are several websites out there that allow you to do this - e.g. amazingcamera.com [amazingcamera.com]
  • This scanning screen reminds me of Apple's old conceptual project "Knowledge Navigator." In one scene of the video, a man is learning to read with the assistance of the device, he takes a newspaper article and wipes it across the screen. The computer scans it and gives him a reading lesson from the scanned article.

    The Knowledge Navigator project was 20 years ago. Many of the ideas in the video have already become reality, this scanning screen might be the next one.
    • Heck, nearly every spy movie or TV show made in the last few decades has some scene in it where the guy presses his thumb to the computer screen and it scans it. Guess they were just ahead of their time.

  • Tech support stories... (Score:3, Funny)

    by exploder (196936) on Monday September 03 2007, @06:31PM (#20457391) Homepage
    So there's the guy who thought his cd-rom tray was a cup holder, the lady who thought the mouse was a foot pedal, and the guy who thought you could fax a document by holding it up to the screen.

    That last guy should have patented it!

  • Sharp has developed a LCD display with optical sensors built into the displays pixels,

    Yes! I've been asking for that exact feature since I got my first notebook PC in 1997.

    without requiring a touch-sensitive film to be bonded on top of the regular screen

    NO! I've been asking for that exact feature, a touchscreen scanner, since I got my first notebook PC in 1997.

    Add the touchscreen.

    And, since I've been asking for it since I got my first notebook PC in 1997, please include a "shape memory" [wikipedia.org] layer that physicall

  • All OLED screens can do this already (Score:5, Informative)

    by maokh (781515) on Tuesday September 04 2007, @01:31AM (#20460745)
    All LEDs inversely function as light detectors, even while emitting light. All that is really needed is a display controller that is designed to detect this reverse current flow. It would be interesting to see such an application. The only thing I have seen so far is a traditional LED matrix that works like a touch screen to turn each individual LED on and off.

    Don't believe me? Here is a primer:

    http://mvh.sr.unh.edu/mvhinvestigations/light_inve stigations.htm [unh.edu]

  • LED do that without sensors (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    LED do that without sensors so OLED might do it as well.
    It is known that the electric resistence of a LED is lower when it is lit up externally so if you put something bright near it, the resistence lowers because it receives its own light back. I wonder if it works for organic leds too, so if you can sense the resistence of every pixel on a OLED display you can know if there is something bright in front of each pixel. The image would be B/W I guess but I think it must be cheap and enough sensitive to make
    • This reminds me of the old tech-support urban legend of the user holding a page up to the screen and hitting "Print".

      Yup. Another joke I knew was about paper-thin flexible displays, and then what do you know, LCD-s happened, then e-ink, then OLED and organic LCD ...

      And it's not that funny anymore ;)

    • From TFA: "Also, the scanner function can be used to scan in a business card placed on top of the screen, ..."
      Frankly, what for ?
      Have you ever received a business card with words: "Have a look, but I need it back !" ???

      Nope. But I have had to carry a pile of cards home from a trade show. I've also lost business cards, having them on my computer somewhere would have been convenient. I've also passed on business cards to other people. A digital version would have made that easier. Etc.

      Plenty of reasons w

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