ASU and the U.S. Army have agreed to extend a five-year contract to ten years as the University continues its research and development of military and commercial technologies.
The extension’s $50 million in Army investments is on top of about $44 million from 2004 to 2009. The majority of the funding fuels ASU’s Flexible Display Center, a 250,000-square-foot research facility at ASU Research Park in Tempe that houses flexible display technology research, the focus of the center and primary interest of Army investors.
Flexible display technology consists of taking typical glass- and plastic-based electronic devices and turning them into bendable, lightweight display devices.
“This is not only a validation of the success of the first phase of the program, but more importantly will enable the deployment of flexible displays to soldiers in the field,” said Sethuraman Panchanathan, deputy vice president of Research and Economic Affairs at ASU.
The center is the first pilot manufacturer of flexible display technology in the world, director Nicholas Colaneri said.
The center’s mission is to develop and test new generations of displays that are flexible, lightweight and operate with minimal power, a sharp contrast to most heavy battery-operated glass or plastic electronic devices weighing down soldiers in the field, Colaneri said.
“The reason the Army is so interested in us is not so much for devices that roll or fold up, but for things not made out of glass,” Colaneri said. “They want lighter, more rugged devices capable of transferring vital pieces of information to the specific solder who has it.”
One company, Raytheon in Dallas, Texas, is already field-testing a wrist-worn flexible display device, Colaneri said, and the company has shown it to senior Army leadership.
The commercial appeal of flexible displays has also driven developers to focus on research outside of military technology, Colaneri said.
Technology analyst iSuppli estimates the commercial market for flexible display will swell from $80 million in 2007 to an estimated $2.8 billion by 2013, according to a recent report done by the California-based company.
The center has partnered its research projects with the University of Texas at Dallas and Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and is supported by commercial giants like Hewlett-Packard, Honeywell, General Dynamics, Boeing and others to open of the potential for commercial profit.
“The center is structured as an industrial partnership with several major names, 27 to 28 of them. They pay annual membership dues and for those dues they get certain rights,” Colaneri said.
The membership dues, he said, guarantee companies a chance to bid on future technologies that the center develops.
“We sort of all hope to develop a flexible display technology that becomes exciting and popular,” Colaneri said. “That’s the dream scenario.”
Reach the reporter at kpatton4@asu.edu
