At last week’s Dubai Airshow, Lufthansa Technik demonstrated a smart tray table that doubles a touchscreen monitor.

The German company has miniaturised the technology behind its hidden touch display to pave the way for a new form of user interface (UI) integration in aircraft cabins.

Called Nice Intellitable, it blends high-definition touchscreen functionality directly into the haptic surface of a folding tray table. The latter’s smart and intuitive display functions only appear on the passenger’s request and just as seamlessly vanish into the tray table’s thin foldable surface when no longer needed.

This represents a further development of Lufthansa’s hidden touch display, which earlier this year won a Red Dot Design Award. The technology fuses high-quality look and feel surfaces with interactive functionality for the aircraft cabin. Customisable for surface appearances such as wood, carbon fibre or metal, all control interfaces can blend seamlessly into the interior design, providing passengers with intuitive yet optically and haptically sophisticated control.

Compared with its wall-mounted predecessor, the customisable table also broadens the spectrum of integrated control functionalities. The current demonstrator integrates content such as flight information, moving map, seat adjustment, food and beverage preview and ordering system, music and video content players, and a flipping book for digital magazines. Once the tray table is needed in its original role as the surface for eating, all hidden touch functions can be reduced to a space-saving design at the edge, or simply switched off.

For this role, the smart surface is completely resistant to spilled fluids and mechanical forces from silverware or other hard items.

“Sometimes, there seems to be a disconnect between how airlines and VIP operators design their controls, and how their passengers actually interact with the cabin environment,” said Andrew Muirhead, Lufthansa Technik (www.lufthansa-technik.com) vice president. “To get rid of traditional control interfaces, which sometimes can feel bulky and outdated, we are permanently rethinking how technology integrates with interior design, creating more cohesive and natural interactions. The Nice Intellitable exemplifies this approach, redefining VIP, but also commercial business or first-class cabins, through more intuitive and seamless technology that puts both passenger experience and airline needs at the centre.”