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Flexible Display Center
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Army News Service article on Flexible Display Center
Publication Date: Spring 2005
Bendable, foldable flat panel displays are one of the hottest high-tech commodities that you don’t know about—yet. The technology is just around the corner. Stay tuned.
Information portals in your pocket? Computers you can fold and carry anywhere? It may be closer than you think. Engineers and scientists from Arizona State University, the U.S. Army, and industry have teamed up to create the Flexible Display Center at the site of an old Motorola plant in Tempe.
Bendable, flat panel displays are one of the hottest high-tech commodities you probably have never heard of—yet. Keep listening. You will hear about them in the near future.
Like flat panel TVs and flat computer screens, bendable flat panel displays will embody all of the sleekness of their technological predecessors. But they will have one major advantage. They can be rolled up or folded up and put in your pocket.
When needed, you’ll simply unroll or unfold your screen and get to work. You can instantly access updates on the weather, stock prices, or the day’s news. Need directions? Use the screen to find the best route to a restaurant in an unfamiliar city.
The military’s commitment to the ASU-Army Flexible Display Center is large. They awarded $43.7 million for the initial five-year cooperative agreement between ASU and the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL). There is an option for an additional $50 million over another five-year period. Expectations are large as well. The goal of the FDC is an array of devices the Army says will revolutionize battlefield communications.
Flexible displays will transform combat maps from static snapshots of days-old field conditions and topography into dynamic real-time displays. Displays would include the movement of troops, the latest intelligence on enemy positions, and up-to-the-minute weather and environmental conditions.
“Flexible displays are the next revolution in information technology,” says Brig. Gen. Roger Nadeau, commanding general of the Army’s Research, Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM). “They will enable lighter weight, lower power, more rugged systems for portable and vehicle applications.”
According to Nadeau, flexible display technology will enable new applications for the soldier that cannot be realized with current glass-based displays. Body-worn displays will conform to the uniform. Flexible displays can be rolled up and put in a pocket when not in use and unrolled for large-area, high information content. Army engineers and scientists are considering many other applications as well.
“These displays will be integrated with computation, communications, and global positioning subsystems to significantly enhance the soldier’s situational awareness, survivability, and effectiveness,” adds ARL Director John Miller.
For the Army, flexible displays will solve a host of problems. It will help them “break the glass barrier” of display technology, in that it will remove the use of fragile, heavy and bulky glass information displays. Every device today, whether it be used in military or civilian applications, requires the use of glass. That glass requires protection. In military use, one pound of glass can require as much as 70 pounds of protection.
The ASU-Army Flexible Display Center will not produce these advanced information portals for the military, says FDC Director Greg Raupp. It will, instead, advance the technology to the doorstep of widespread use. Although the Army provides core funding for the center, the center’s focus is on commercial applications.
“The center will bring flexible display technology to the brink of commercialization,” Raupp explains. “It will become an ‘off-the-shelf’ technology available to the Army that also can be used in a variety of commercial flexible displays for consumer.”
The goal is to speed commercialization of flexible displays by keeping development centered on commercial standards.
“This means there will be no issues of classified research or restricting suppliers of the export of technologies,” says David Morton, displays technology manager for the ARL in Adelphi, Md.
Flexible displays are expected to be used in a variety of consumer products. These will include small scale displays in personal communications devices such as cell phones and mobile e-mail, and personal health and fitness monitors. Medium scale displays will appear in automobiles and small trucks. Large scale flexible displays will be used for advertising and business conferencing activities.
Work at the center will accelerate research, development, and manufacture of flexible display technologies, which will speed commercialization of flexible displays. The Army&3146;s investment will lead to low-volume manufacturing that meets its needs while ensuring the technologies become the industry’s commercial standard.
ASU was awarded the center after an intense, nearly yearlong national competition. As a result of the cooperative agreement, ASU acquired a state-of-the-art multi-functional display manufacturing facility in the ASU Research Park.
The 250,000 square-foot facility was originally designed and built for flat panel display R&D to manufacturing. It includes 43,500 square feet of advanced clean room space and extensive wet and dry labs. ASU acquired the facility to enable a very rapid start-up for the project, a scenario the Army deemed important to the project’s success.
Working within the center will be researchers from a team of military, industry, and academic partners. Army partners include the ARL, the Natick Soldier Center, and RDECOM.
Industry partners include EV Group, Honeywell, Universal Display Corporation, Kent Displays, E Ink, Ito America, Corning, General Dynamics, Rockwell Collins, Abbie Gregg Inc., and the U.S. Display Consortium.
University collaborators include Cornell University, the University of Texas, and Waterloo University. Additional partners will be added as the center matures.
Flexible display technology promises to boost U.S. display companies by helping to create many significant future commercial applications.
“The FDC is more than a single purpose center,” says Jonathan Fink, ASU Vice President for Research and Economic Affairs. “This center will aid the Army in a very important quest to significantly update its IT capabilities. But it will also spawn a new industry largely based in Arizona. This new industry will specialize in flexible intelligent displays to be used in commercial devices in a host of new products that will increase productivity and enhance leisure time activities.”—Skip DerraResearch at the ASU-Army Flexible Display Center is supported by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and many private industry partners. For more information, contact FDC Executive Director Gregory Raupp, Ph.D., 480.727.8941. Send e-mail to raupp@asu.eduEngineering and Technology: Computer Science | Engineering and Technology: Materials Engineering