NTOUCH 2.0
Bringing touchless control to industry 4.0
| Type | Open Call No. | Funds granted |
| Twin AE | OC 3 | €99,976.94 |
Challenge
Industry has widely adopted touchscreen displays; however, this is not the best solution in all scenarios. This is, for instance the case of harsh or hazardous environments, which involve operations that may require gloves due to sanitary or safety reasons. NTOUCH 2.0 team is in touch with end-users who are exploring other kinds of Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) because nothing in the market fits their needs.
Our research and past experience have led us to consider the usage of gesture recognition devices for these interactions. How will manufacturing operators react to a gesture recognition device? Will it be useful in their day-to-day operations? Will it be safer?
Solutions provided
The Ntouch 2.0 team is developing a device that can recognize gestures using embedded Machine Learning. Thanks to innovative Time-of-Flight sensors and state-of-the-art algorithms, we can detect gestures under any environmental conditions and even while wearing gloves. We can detect two types of gestures: dynamic (e.g., swipe or dial) and static (e.g., finger count). In the former, a continuous stream of data is being processed in real time, while in the latter, we are capturing a small depth “map”.
Consortium strength
Despite being an ambitious project, SC Robotics’ expertise in hardware development, together with Edge Impulse’s know-how in embedded Machine Learning (also called TinyML) ensure the technical viability of the project. Both companies have many years of experience participating in innovation programs while being very close to industry-leading players. Our ultimate goal is always to develop something that is going to be used. Apart from project coordination, our DigiFed partners, BME, is assisting us in entering the market by giving us valuable feedback and recommendations from a potential user point of view.
Business development
NTOUCH 2.0 is intended to be sold integrated with other devices or as an attachable peripheral device. Our primary target customers will be Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) of Industrial Control Panels and Technology Integrators. We also plan to sell it to companies willing to upgrade their current control infrastructure.
Companies involved
SC Robotics is a young Spanish company specialized in the design, development and manufacture of customized integrated electronic devices. The core of its know-how is based around intelligent, low power and remotely connected sensors in the agrotech industry, offering a broad portfolio of devices that can cover many different user needs. A solar powered datalogger for crops and farms with all kinds of needs and sizes, or a smart bung for wine and liquor are recent examples. Since it was created, it has participated in many R&D projects to improve their own products or explore new ideas and markets.
| Website | Company size | Country | Industry sector |
| scrobotics.es | Micro (1-10) | Spain | ICT/AI |
Edge Impulse is the leading development platform for embedded machine learning, used by over 3,000 enterprises across 62,000+ ML projects worldwide. We are on a mission to enable the ultimate development experience for machine learning on embedded devices for sensors, audio, and computer vision, at scale. From getting started in under five minutes to real time inference in production, we enable highly optimized Machine Learning deployable to a wide range of hardware from microcontrollers to fully fledged computer processors.
| Website | Company size | Country | Industry sector |
| edgeimpulse.com | SME (11-50) | Netherlands | Industry 4.0 |
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 872088.