Evolving ergonomics with multi-touch

User habits will migrate from smartphones to the HMIs of the future.

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In the area of consumer electronics, multi-touch has not only changed the ergonomics of devices, it has changed user habits as well. In industrial automation, this technology has the potential to make machine operation more intuitive, faster and safer. In essence, this may bring about a revolution in ergonomics for machine and system visualization units.

In industrial automation, there has been a strong and consistent trend towards touch screens for over a decade. They have even broken through in a big way in hygiene-related industries such as foodstuffs and pharmaceuticals. "Touch screens are not likely to completely replace devices with physical keys," said Raimund Ruf, manager of the HMI Business Unit at B&R Automation. "Nevertheless; they will continue to advance into more and more areas due to their overall versatility. At the same time, we are seeing much more emphasis being placed on user ergonomics, both in how panel hardware is arranged as well as in the design of the user interface."

The multi-touch technology we are familiar with from smartphones, which can detect and evaluate the presence of two or more points of contact with the screen at the same time. This offers the next big leap in innovation in the field of machine manufacturing.

It promises a significant increase in usability by simplifying system operation while increasing the level of safety at the same time. Operations where one hand is used to open up a menu while the other sets parameters setting are definitely a possibility. This would eliminate the need to jump back and forth between sub-menus while increasing overall clarity in the application. The operator is able to get where he needs to go faster because complex menu layers can be eliminated. Handling lists would also be simplified since the operator could simply scroll through the content instead of having to rely on narrow scrollbars.

Operational safety can also be increased by implementing methods such as blocking certain actions until an additional button is pressed simultaneously with the other hand. Even if this doesn't completely replace dead-man's controls just yet, multi-touch operation used in this way can still prevent critical operating steps from being carried out unintentionally. 

Content provided by B&R Automation.