Light Blue Optics (LBO) just announced its first product – Light Touch – an interactive projector that turns any flat surface into a 10″ touch screen. Light Touch™ not only frees multimedia content from the confines of the small screen, but also lets users interact with that content in the same way as they expect to on their other hand-held devices – using touch technology. Light Touch is a reference product and will be made available to Light Blue Optics’ OEM customers and other strategic partners.

Light Touch incorporates LBO’s proprietary holographic laser projection technology (HLP™), creating bright, high-quality WVGA resolution video images that are always in focus. HLP™ enables extremely wide throw angles, resulting in large images being created at close proximity to the projector’s aperture. HLP can also correct for distortion and optical aberrations in software, enabling novel table-top projection. A unique optical architecture delivers a Class 1 laser safety classification making HLP™ and devices that incorporate it eye safe.

Light Touch™ includes an infra-red touch sensing system that transforms the projected image into a virtual 10″ touch screen. The user can control the projector and interact with multimedia content and applications simply by touching the projected image. Light Touch™ runs Adobe Flash Lite 3.1, leveraging a large existing developer community and enabling the rapid development of innovative applications. WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity enable device to device communication and applications that connect directly to the internet such as social networking, multimedia sharing and electronic point of sale. Light Touch ™ is equipped with 2GB of onboard Flash memory and has a Micro SD card slot that supports up to 32GB. Light Touch™ can be wall powered or battery operated, with a run-time of 2 hours before recharging is required.

Light Touch opens up a world of new opportunities for touch interactive displays – and when the display is off, there’s nothing there to get in the way.

Light Touch has been named a CES Innovations Honoree in two categories: Media Players and Personal Electronics.

Light Touch can create exciting new user interfaces in retail environments – ideal for browsing and electronic point of sale.