External Light Evasion Method for Large Multi-touch Screens

Abstract

This paper presents an external light evasion method that rectifies the problem of misrecognition due to external lighting. The fundamental concept underlying the proposed method involves recognition of the differences between two images and elimination of the desynchronized external light by synchronizing the image sensor and inner light source of the optical touch screen. A range of artificial indoor light sources and natural sunlight are assessed. The proposed system synchronizes with a Vertical Synchronization (VSYNC) signal and the light source drive signal of the image sensor. Therefore, it can display synchronized light of the acquired image through the image sensor and remove external light that is not from the light source. A subtraction operation is used to find the differences and the absolute value of the result is utilized; hence, the order is irrelevant. The resulting image, which displays only a touched blob on the touchscreen, was created after image processing for coordination recognition and was then supplied to a coordination extraction algorithm.