Light Blue Optics Unveils Light Touch™ - an Interactive Projector That Turns Any Flat Surface into a Touch Screen

Light Blue Optics (LBO) today announced its first product - Light Touch™ - an interactive projector that turns any flat surface into a 10” touch screen. Light Touch™ not only frees multimedia content from the confines of the small screen, but also lets users interact with that content in the same way as they expect to on their other hand-held devices - using touch technology. Light Touch is a reference product and will be made available to Light Blue Optics’ OEM customers and other strategic partners. An invite-only product launch will take place tomorrow evening (6 Jan 2010) at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 10) in Las Vegas.

Light Touch™ incorporates LBO’s proprietary holographic laser projection technology (HLP™), creating bright, high-quality WVGA resolution video images that are always in focus. HLP™ enables extremely wide throw angles, resulting in large images being created at close proximity to the projector’s aperture. HLP can also correct for distortion and optical aberrations in software, enabling novel table-top projection. A unique optical architecture delivers a Class 1 laser safety classification making HLP™ and devices that incorporate it eye safe.

Light Touch™ includes an infra-red touch sensing system that transforms the projected image into a virtual 10” touch screen. The user can control the projector and interact with multimedia content and applications simply by touching the projected image. Light Touch™ runs Adobe Flash Lite 3.1, leveraging a large existing developer community and enabling the rapid development of innovative applications. WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity enable device to device communication and applications that connect directly to the internet such as social networking, multimedia sharing and electronic point of sale. Light Touch ™ is equipped with 2GB of onboard Flash memory and has a Micro SD card slot that supports up to 32GB. Light Touch™ can be wall powered or battery operated, with a run-time of 2 hours before recharging is required.

Light Blue Optics’ CEO, Chris Harris said “At LBO, we believe that today’s consumer is no longer a passive viewer of multimedia content. People expect to engage, interact and share content and our first product enables them to do that in new and exciting ways. The opportunities for Light Touch™ extend beyond consumer electronics into retail spaces, the workplace and the home - profoundly changing the way people interact with multimedia content and the built environment. By enabling such diverse and compelling use cases, LBO aims to become the world’s leading supplier of miniature projection systems.”

Light Touch™ has been named a CES Innovations Honoree in two categories: Media Players and Personal Electronics.

Notes to Editors:

Light Blue Optics (www.lightblueoptics.com)

Light Blue Optics is a privately-funded company developing and supplying miniature projection systems for use in high volume applications in markets including automotive, digital signage and consumer electronics.

Powered by our proprietary HLP™ technology, our products create bright, high-resolution images that are always in focus, work on all manner of surface, and can even respond to touch. We believe that HLP™ technology will soon become ubiquitous – seamlessly integrated into our homes, vehicles and personal devices, and changing the way we see and interact with the world.

Light Blue Optics is headquartered in Cambridge, UK with a Development Facility in Colorado Springs, USA. The Company is funded by a syndicate of investors including Robert Bosch Venture Capital, Earlybird Venture Capital, Capital-E, NESTA and Encore Ventures, a division of DFJ Esprit

Photos/Multimedia Gallery Available: http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/mmg.cgi?eid=6129133&lang=en