OMRON and Renesas are partnering to develop touch sensor solutions

OMRON Corporation and Renesas Technology agreed to jointly develop capacitive touch sensor 1 solutions. Based on this agreement, Renesas will integrate OMRON's touch sensor technology into its R8C Family 16-bit microcontroller (MCU) products and supply touch sensor solutions for a wide range of fields, including household appliances and mobile devices.

Touch panels are increasingly being used in a wide variety of products, including household appliances, AV equipment, office equipment, game machines, mobile phones, and portable music players.

By creating a hardware version of OMRON's proven touch sensor technology in the form of a touch detection circuit device and integrating it into Renesas' R8C Family of microcontroller products as a single chip solution, Renesas is providing cost and design benefits to its customers.

Yasushi Akao, Renesas Technology board director and executive general manager of the MCU business group, said, "I think that by fusing our MCU and analog peripheral circuit technology, two of Renesas' strengths, with capacitive touch sensor technology from OMRON, we will be able to offer our customers MCUs with highly reliable and cost-effective touch sensor functionality. I am confident that our low-power solutions will increase adoption of our products in a wide range of new applications and help revitalize the market by enabling the creation of new products with distinctive designs."

Soichi Yukawa, OMRON senior managing officer and electronic components company president, remarked, "In recent years, touch sensors have come to be used as the input method for many electronic products, but there have been problems regarding design flexibility and convenience. I am confident that the products that will result from this joint development project will combine sensor technology and MCU technology-the core competences of the two partners-to realize systems with a new level of 'user friendliness' and lead to wider adoption of touch interfaces."