This story appears in the May 24, 2015 issue of Forbes. Subscribe
In the early 2000s engineer David Caldwell might have missed the chance of a lifetime. While developing touch-sensitive switches for home appliances, Caldwell was invited to Cupertino, Calif. to demonstrate his patented TouchSensor technology to
Sure, replied Caldwell.
But nothing ever came of the discussion, partly because Illinois-based Gemtron, the glass company that controlled his technology, wasn't interested in diversifying beyond its core expertise: selling $100 cooktops embedded with electronics to companies like
Who knows what might have happened if the talks continued? Caldwell, now 58, his round face framed by shaggy bangs and rectangular glasses, tries not to dwell on the missed opportunity. "You can't look back," he says, sitting in a nondescript office-park laboratory in Holland, Mich. "I did okay."
Caldwell holds more than 30 patents, many on touch technology. His TouchSensor switches have been incorporated into millions of control panels, for everything from automobiles to washing machines to beverage dispensers at fast-food joints. Still, when Gemtron sold TouchSensor to another firm in 2007 for just $65 million, Caldwell opted to strike out on his own. Less than a year later he formed a new company, AlSentis, to reinvent touch technology once again.
The result, eight years later, is a potential breakthrough that could transform how people around the world interact with their electronic devices. Called HSS (for "heuristic signature sensing"), Caldwell's patented setup is far more reliable and uses far less energy than today's touch systems. It even works when wet or dirty, and can be operated with gloves on.
"From what I've seen," says Bruce Banter, president of Tech-D-P in Plymouth, Mich., an expert in automotive touch controls, "there's nobody even close."
Most touch-sensitive products, like those used in the iPhone and other personal computing devices, are known as "capacitive" systems. They sense when and where an object--typically a finger--breaks an electric field. To trigger a touch signal, engineers set a very thin threshold, just above the surface of the device, to measure capacitive change. That's why a light touch is all that's needed to operate a smartphone.
But environmental factors can wreak havoc with capacitive systems: Who hasn't accidentally butt-dialed someone or struggled in vain to make a call with wet hands or with gloves on? During manufacturing, even the slightest variance, like an uneven layer of paint or adhesive, or a change in humidity, can affect the circuitry and how a touch panel feels or if it works at all.
Caldwell's breakthrough idea: Do away with the arbitrary trigger point in a capacitive system and replace it with a smarter electronic "touch signature" that can detect an actual touch on a real surface. HSS technology uses a larger area above the surface--the touch recognition zone--to capture and process more information from the electric field. HSS measures not only when an object (or finger) breaks the field, but also the speed at which the object is traveling, when it stops, and its final position on x and y axes. By quickly processing all the extra data, it knows exactly when a finger is a finger and when it's a drop of water or something else and, more important, what data to ignore (no more butt dials). And because it's not dependent on calibration of an arbitrary threshold, it also works with gloves.
For now AlSentis is focused on licensing its technology to replace buttons on cars, industrial equipment and kitchen devices. Touchscreen prototypes for consumer devices are coming later this year. On the new
"Think of all the controls, light switches, machinery, dashboards in cars. We're really excited," says Amway heir Rick DeVos, who is an AlSentis investor through Start Garden, his early-stage venture firm (other investors include Windquest Group and Methode Electronics). The auto industry alone produces 4.6 billion buttons a year. Coca-Cola has millions of vending machines in the U.S., each with 8 to 12 buttons.
Caldwell's aptitude for electronics was evident even as a kid shooting off rockets in Lapeer, Mich., about an hour north of Detroit. In high school he griped about taking math and science--until he got to physics, "because now I know what it's all about."
After graduating in 1975, he joined the Navy, where a recruiting test pegged him to work on a nuclear-powered vessel. He made the most of it, learning all he could about energy, electronics and microprocessors, which were just emerging.
When he left the Navy in 1981, he married and resettled in Michigan, working on rain-sensing windshields for General Motors. He later jumped to GM supplier Donnelly, where his interest in thin film sensors really took off. But Donnelly was less interested, so Caldwell left, determined to make the sensors he'd been working on obsolete. He created a new company, TouchSensor Technologies.
Finding capital was always a struggle. His father provided the original seed money, and Caldwell had to scramble to find out-of-state investors (he found none in Michigan at the time), eventually selling control to Gemtron to stay afloat.
AlSentis is his second chance. The company says it broke even last year as revenue exploded from $123,000 in 2013 to more than $2 million in 2014. With only 15 employees (6 of them engineers), the company won't manufacture anything. Its business model is to license the technology and outsource manufacturing. It hopes to raise several million dollars this year in a Series A financing round.
"This is so much bigger than TouchSensor," says Caldwell. "There are so many applications that want touch. Where we're standing, the road is wide open." And who knows? Maybe someday it will lead back to Cupertino.
