Novel LCDs with IR‐sensitive backlights

— In this paper, a novel multi-touch LCD architecture with hover-sensing capability is described. To detect multiple touch points and hover points simultaneously, a sensitive backlight, which is a backlight integrated with an IR sensor array, is introduced. The sensitive backlight uses visible light to display contents on a display screen and is also used to detect reflected IR light from objects on or near the display screen. The captured image from the sensitive backlight is used to extract touch and hover information. The proposed display architecture maintains the slim form factor of an LCD with no loss of display quality, while making it possible to sense multiple touches and hovers simultaneously.