Advanced Input Systems can develop the optimum TouchSense module to satisfy applications needing small size, low cost, and low power, as well as applications with the most demanding performance requirements, including strong forces and wide ranges of motion.

TouchSense models can be configured for dial, scroll wheel, thumb wheel, lever, or T-handle devices, and can include a push-to-select function. In addition, common standard communications protocols such as RS-232, USB, CAN, and TTL serial can be supported.

Each model contains different actuator technology and varies in torque, size, power consumption, cost, in the haptic effects it produces, and in the characteristics of those effects.

TouchSense Rotary Module Comparison

	Braking Actuator	Motor Actuator	Hybrid
Detent	•	•	•
Barrier	•	•	•
Hill	•	•	•
Constant force	•	•	•
Spring		•	•
Damper		•	•
Periodics		•	•
Pulses		•	•

Standard and Custom Models Provide Design Flexibility
A comparison of module performance can best be understood by considering how their actuators are applied to create different events:

Braking Actuator
Braking actuators dissipate energy and resist user motion. A braking-based system would play a steeply sided detent with a sharp peak (a saw-tooth or triangular shape) by applying the brake with increasing force. As the user turns the module’s shaft into the downward portion of the effect, the braking actuator lets go, applying zero force, which gives the sensation of falling into the detent. This module plays a barrier by applying the brake, which sharply stops any further rotation in that direction.

The Braking actuator has the lowest power requirement and the smallest size of any in the family, yet it’s still powerful enough to render stiff width-adjustable barriers and satisfying detents. In fact, its higher torque enables stiffer barriers than the motor actuator. The actuator can be easily integrated into a wide variety of control panels and systems. The shaft uses industry-standard dimensions to accept most commercial dials, knobs, and levers.

Motor Actuator
Motor actuators apply a force to either oppose or reinforce user motions. A motor-based actuator system plays a triangular shaped detent by pushing against the direction of the user’s motion until the top of the triangle is reached. If the user continues to exert force to enter the detent, just after the peak position, the motor begins to push in the same direction as the user’s motion, which supplies a very smooth action.

These modules play barriers by exerting increasing opposing force as the user continues to rotate the control into the barrier. Motor actuators alone can’t produce barriers as stiff as a Braking actuator. These modules are custom products configured to customer specifications. In addition to detents, barriers, hills, and dampers, they can produce more sophisticated dynamic effects such as springs and time-based periodics.

Hybrid Actuator
Hybrid modules include both braking and motor actuators to produce a very wide range of effects. These play detent effects in the same way as the Motor and barrier events in the same way as the Brake.

Like the Motor, the Hybrid is also a custom product designed to customer specifications. It produces dynamic effects such as springs, periodics, and detents—and its barriers are extremely stiff, more so than the Motor actuator.