NEXTY Electronics Corporation (President: Atsushi Aoki; Headquarters: Minato-ku, Tokyo; hereinafter referred to as “NEXTY Electronics”) will begin sales in August 2021 of the VTouch Standardized Module VTP84SHC, which is made by South Korean VTouch, Inc. (Co-CEOs: SJ Kim & Nathan Kim; Headquarters: Seoul; hereinafter “VTouch”), the only company in the world possessing long-distance contactless touch technology. Installing this module on large-scale displays, such as vending machines and digital signage, enables their operation from a distance through gestures touching points in the air. This eliminates the need to make physical contact with buttons or the device itself. In this way, it also allows persons of varying heights and those using mobility devices, such as wheelchairs, to operate these devices even if they cannot touch them directly.

[Background and Purpose]

The need for the sanitary operation of devices using contactless technology is growing rapidly due the significant impact of COVID-19.

It is amid these circumstances that NEXTY Electronics will begin offering VTouch’s Standardized Module to make it even easier for a variety of customers to enable long-distance contactless touch operation of their electronic devices.

VTouch’s unique Virtual Touch technology enables sensing of touch gestures within a range of 0 to 1.2 meters1 with support for vertical displays up to 65 inches in height. VTouch’s proprietary algorithms also eliminate the delay commonly experienced when using existing contactless touch technologies.

The VTP84SHC makes long-distance contactless touch operation possible by deciding what part of a device a user wants to touch by using a 3D Time of Flight (ToF) camera to recognize the positions of a users’ eyes and fingertip.

An original AI algorithm identifies what the user wants to touch and matches the coordinates of that point with the module’s internal 3D spatial coordinate system.

Since this product is offered as a standardized module, it will significantly reduce deployment costs by eliminating the high development costs currently incurred due to customizing existing solutions to meet each customer’s unique use requirements. The addition of new features to the VTP84SHC in the future will enable the contactless operation of electronic devices and objects besides displays, allowing it to be used to control smart homes and in-car systems.

Example of use with a vending machine. Selections can be made that are physically out of reach.

NEXTY Electronics is the exclusive distributor of VTouch products in Japan. By teaming its wealth of semiconductor technologies and knowhow with VTouch’s refined gesture recognition technology, which is based on the South Korean startup’s technologies in the areas of computer vision, machine learning and deep learning, NEXTY Electronics will contribute to making a safer and more secure society by rapidly resolving the challenges it faces.

1: Eye distance: up to 0.8 m; finger distance: 0-0.25 m; when used sitting or at child’s height: up to 1.2 m

Use Cases

Digital signage, order kiosks, drive-throughs, vending machines, elevators, medical settings, ATMs, smart homes

Order kiosk	In-car	Elevators

[Company Profiles]

■NEXTY Electronics Corporation
Shinagawa Front Bldg., 2-3-13, Konan, Minato-ku, Tokyo

NEXTY Electronics, an electronics trading company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan is one of the core members of the Toyota Tsusho Group’s electronics business and boasts top-of-class scale in the automotive electronics sector. With its core strengths of technology and products, NEXTY Electronics meets customer and global needs in a broad range of areas and provides solutions to the challenges faced by society. It achieves this by actively adapting the autonomous driving, connected and other leading-edge technologies it has cultivated in the automotive electronics sector for use in other industries. It offers optimum global solutions that transcend regions and business boundaries by leveraging the Toyota Tsusho Group’s global network and intensifying its discovery of the cutting-edge proprietary technologies of startups from around the world.

Visit the links below for more information.

NEXTY Electronics website: https://www.nexty-ele.com/english/

■VTouch, Inc.

4F, 25, Gangnamdae-ro 132-gil, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Korea

A South Korean startup founded in 2012. VTouch, which possesses advanced technological expertise in the computer vision and machine learning fields, developed the contactless Virtual Touch technology, the first in the world to use spatial coordinates to track user movement. The company’s high level of expertise in this area is recognized world-wide, which includes winning Innovation Awards in two categories in 2021 at CES, the world’s largest electronics show. It has applied for 94 patents and registered 42 patents related to virtual-touch technologies.

Additionally, Co-CEO SJ Kim was selected as “Invention King of the Year” at the 56th Invention Day event, which is organized by the Korean Intellectual Property Office and administered by the Invention Promotion Association.

Visit the links below for more information.

VTouch website: https://vtouch.io/en-us

Virtual Touch Panel video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJGImUUeMBo