Renesas Electronics, Immersion to offer an optimum human-machine experience

Embedded Systems Conference Silicon Valley 2010, SANTA CLARA & SAN JOSE, USA: Renesas Electronics America Inc. and Immersion Corp. have collaborated to provide a system-level solution that enables designers of consumer electronics; white goods; and medical, building automation and office equipment to enhance user experiences by integrating rich haptic feedback in product designs.

This new solution offers manufacturers easy procurement and a simplified way to integrate Immersion's TouchSense technology, which provides low-cost, high-fidelity programmable haptic feedback using a modular approach based on Renesas Electronics’ microcontrollers (MCUs).

A demonstration of the solution will be available in Renesas Electronics America’s booth (#2002) at Embedded Systems Conference Silicon Valley at the McEnery Convention Center, San Jose, California, April 27-29.

This TouchSense solution offers an extensive library of vibro-tactile haptic effects for touch surfaces and touch screens, enabling advanced user interfaces. Touch screen usage models include simple button clicks, differentiated button haptics, or haptics for scroll lists and gestures, restoring the "feel" to the "seamless" interface.

Customers using Renesas Electronics’ MCUs can produce high-fidelity haptic systems to achieve competitive advantages and win greater revenue opportunities by offering products that are more intuitive, satisfying and efficient.

This simple, easy-to-integrate haptic solution is compatible with Renesas Electronics’ MCUs designed for a wide range of applications. Renesas Electronics’ leadership in the MCU market (30 percent share1) ensures quality and reliability, and its global support minimizes risks, while Immersion’s position as the top developer and licensor of touch-feedback technology offers state-of-the-art haptics.

Thus, the collaboration between Renesas Electronics and Immersion brings a true world-class design solution for improving human-machine experiences to a vast range of customers in diverse global markets.

"Renesas Electronics America’s desire to stay a step ahead, and its established focus on interface technologies, makes it an ideal company to join forces with," said Craig Vachon, senior vice president and general manager of Immersion. "Offering our haptics technology at the semiconductor level from a true world player significantly simplifies integration and procurement for OEMs. This will drive innovation and make it easier for customers to transform user experiences by incorporating the power of touch feedback.”

"To address the market demand for better user experiences, we are combining Renesas Electronics' advanced technologies with Immersion's haptic solutions to enable the development of next-generation human-machine interfaces,” said Ritesh Tyagi, director of microcontroller products and solutions marketing, Consumer and Industrial Business Unit, Renesas Electronics America.

"Immersion's haptics capability is a natural fit for Renesas Electronics' new line of hardware-assisted capacitive-touch microcontrollers and TFT-LCD graphic solutions, which are geared for a wide range of markets such as white goods, medical and consumer products."