(2019.09.11)Frankfurt / Bad Neustadt a. d. Saale. The HMI specialist Preh will present the latest developments in the field of Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) at the Joyson Group’s joint stand (Hall 8, Booth D39). Between others, these include a door-control module and a fingerprint sensor that can be integrated into various HMIs.

The novel door-control module, which originated at Preh in Pre-Development, can be realized with different surface materials, for example with plastic, real glass or (vegan) leather. In contrast to previous operating systems with active haptics, a new type of actuator generation and technology is currently being used for sensing force.

Dr. Matthias Lust, Head of Pre-Development / Patent Management at Preh: “When the driver or passenger initiates a function, the force acting on our latest HMI generation is evaluated by means of optical sensors. We are now supplementing our previous experience with capacitive and inductive force detection in series products with a production-ready solution based on optical sensors”.

A particular challenge which Preh’s engineers had to master was that the curvature of the surface and the size of the operating system made it very difficult to detect an impacting force accurately. The biggest advantage of this applied technology is that the different surface materials handle the problem without any openings because no buttons are used. In addition, the integrated controls have a black panel effect”, in other words, they cannot be seen at first glance, but become visible only when the hand approaches.

An optional new fingerprint sensor that can be integrated into the door-control module can be used to scroll through lists or maps. When a user’s fingerprint is detected, the various individual settings can be applied. Thus, the settings of mirrors, seat, and temperature, or of the chassis and transmission, which have already been stored initially by means of the fingerprint recognition, can be applied automatically.

Dr. Lust: “Some customers, for example, also want to connect to their Amazon account or other payment functions using the fingerprint sensor”. The sensor can be positioned in the vehicle with great flexibility.