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Many years of co-operation between the Danish company OPDI Technologies and Risø has resulted in the development of an advanced ”All-in-one-chip” ready to be built into optical mice. Today OPDI-Technologies is close to marketing a cheaper an more exact optical mouse, in co-operation with PixArt Imaging Inc, Taiwan.
Risø has filed a patent application for the invention in Europe, Japan, Russia, USA, China and India. OPDI Technologies has the licence to use the chip for cursor control. They have passed on the rights to PixArt.
Today’s optical mouse consists of more than 20 small parts which need to be assembled. The technology involved is not quite precise, and assembling the many small parts requires cheap labour in production if prices are to be kept low. However, the optical mouse of tomorrow may be based on a simple optical chip measuring only 3 x 3 mm and which contains all the technology needed to measure the movements of the mouse and transfer them to the screen. The optics for the chip are cast in plastic on the basis of master boards manufactured using Risø’s nanoplotter.
The movements of the OPDI mouse are caught by a number of microlenses – based on the fly eye principle – here reproduced as a dragon fly. |
”Our system gives a very exact determination of velocity and direction. The chip is small, cheap and robust. So far no one has been able to develop an optical miniature chip, and this concept opens the way for many industrial applications. It can be built into mobile telephones, MP3 players or similar things with a mouse function, says research specialist Steen Grüner Hanson from Risø’s Optics and Plasma Research Department.
”Invaluable values are lying in Risø’s know-how and research results. The challenge consists in making use of this knowledge and technology for specific applications, which can be sold. I recommend that technological companies establish co-operation with a research centre”, says Jørgen Korsgaard Jensen, director in OPDI-Technologies. The company is involved in 4-5 new projects at Risø. | |