Virtual button will impact medical safety and home technology

BlackBerry Pearl prototype demo unit has 49 Virtual Buttons on its casing
(Photo provided by Virtual Button Technologies)
 

Four college guys got together and created a small entity that may end up changing your world. Called the Virtual Button, this invention will soon impact medical technology and home technology, particularly in the area of home electronics.

Virtual Button was created when some fourth year engineering students at University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada dreamed it up, researched patents and filed theirs. They've all graduated and are producing the Button - looking for backers, raising funding for their project and marketing it to OEM (original equipment manufacturers) quite successfully, according to Andrew Zwart, a founding partner.

Virtual Buttons aren't nano but they are incredibly small

Jake Zwart, his son Andrew Zwart, Simon Lancaster-Larocque, and Matthew Rendall are the guru minds that began this technical Odyssey. All except Jake are in their mid 20s and are pretty typical young men, except that they came up with a phenomenal idea that may, in the near future, rock the way health care equipment and consumer electronics behave.

Virtual Buttons are software based user interfaces. The manufacturer of, say, a cell phone, places a button on the insides of the phone's system. They program it, or teach it to respond to physical input from you, the user. Like, you tap the side of you cell phone once and it reduces it's volume. Tap twice, Andrew explained to me, and it might put itself on hold.

Not quite nano technology, the sensors, the brains of the Button, are tiny -- millimeters by millimeters. They are placed on the circuit board. The technology is mems-based (micro electro mechanical systems) much like the technology that makes Wii controllers sense your hand turning or lifting. The sensors can determine the location and intensity of a very small input - like a tap or a turn.

How Virtual Buttons will come into your home technology

Though the technology exists to allow end users to teach Buttons to do functions, like users can teach F buttons on a keyboard to do certain things, so far the existing application are all controlled and taught at the manufacturing level.

Uses of Virtual Button technology are almost limitless. The Button inventors tell me, for example, that in hospitals, where contamination is an issue, they can control equipment functions. The advantage? The button allows a tap to control on/off or up/down, without using a switch or physical button that has edges, rims and corners to trap bacteria. Virtual Button is built in and undetectable, not interrupting the surface at all.

Diabetics might find these in their blood monitoring equipment, making sterilization much easier and more reliable. Virtual Button technology can go anywhere on almost any surface.

In home technology you'll see them control laptops. Virtual Buttons can be set into the laptop's "mind" and cause it to bring up your desktop. They can open a window, show you Windows Explorer or shut down the system. Cell phones will have Virtual Buttons, as might music players or TV remote controllers.

VBT Innovations Inc., the company that developed Virtual Button, is growing rapidly. Andrew tells me they're ready to do additional application-specific development for potential customers, something they're busy working on right now for original users. They'll continue to grow and to hire people who fit their goals. Chicago-based engineering gurus are welcome to inquire.

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