A touchpad for force and location sensing

Abstract

This paper presents the design and fabrication model of a touchpad based on a contact-resistance-type force sensor. The touchpad works as a touch input device, which can sense contact location and contact force simultaneously. The touchpad is 40 mm wide and 40 mm long. The touchpad is fabricated by using a simple screen printing technique. The contact location is evaluated by the calibration setup, which has a load cell and three-axis stages. The location error is approximately 4 mm with respect to x-axis and y-axis directions. The force response of the fabricated touchpad is obtained at three points by loading and unloading of the probe. The touchpad can detect loads from 0 N to 2 N. The touchpad shows a hysteresis error rate of about 11% and uniformity error rate of about 3%. © 2010 ETRI.