EyeSight

Israel and The US, 7th February 2013 – Israeli company eyeSight Technologies today announces the world’s first commercial gesture technology to allow users to control digital devices with a fingertip, even from across a room. With eyeSight’s camera-based ‘fingertip tracking’ users can, for the first time, move a cursor simply by pointing their finger directly at the screen, for the ultimate intuitive user experience.

The success of any gesture system will be dictated by how ‘natural’ it feels,” commented Gideon Shmuel, CEO of eyeSight. “Just as Apple made control via touchscreens feel completely natural a few years ago, we’re hoping to do the same thing with gesture: Our fingertip tracking makes gesture feel so intuitive that eventually people will use it without even thinking about it. Now we’re hoping to make this capability available in consumer devices produced by our customers.”

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Israel, January 7th 2013 – Following hot on the heels of today’s AMD news, eyeSight today announces that its leading gesture control technology has been pre-integrated into AMD’s newest Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) family, Richland; intended primarily for PCs, laptops and tablets. With eyeSight’s gesture recognition closely optimized and pre-integrated, Richland APU devices are able to process gestures with optimal speed, accuracy and efficiency. Along with eyeSight’s gesture technology AMD is providing an ideal solution to the snowballing demand for intuitive gesture-capabilities in both business and consumer devices.

eyeSight’s software has been optimized for the AMD APU parallel computing architecture, and has been pre-integrated as software-on-chip, allowing the rapid processing of simple hand-gestures and hand tracking for virtual-mouse point-and-click.

Where eyeSight’s software is run on a CPU, it takes around 150ms to process a frame of video. On the Richland APU family with eyeSight pre-integrated, this same task takes 7.5m; a speed improvement of 20x!

Although eyeSight’s gesture technology is already intuitive and accurate, Richland’s extreme efficiency provides capacity for even more accurate, responsive, seamless gesture in devices, as well as better overall performance of concurrently-running applications. This will be noticed by the end-user as a smoother, more seamless gesture experience.

“To have a company as AMD getting behind gesture control in this way is really significant. It shows that AMD understands just how important gesture has become in digital devices,” commented Gideon Shmuel, CEO, eyeSight. “And pre-integration makes perfect sense: The Richland APU carries out gesture operations that are usually more CPU-intensive with an extremely low impact on the processing load of the system, making for a smooth overall experience. AMD’s solution will clearly be a very attractive option for any OEM looking to build a PC, laptop or tablet with gesture control functionality.”

eyeSight’s technology enables touch-free control of a wide variety of functions, including the Windows 8 modern UI , PowerPoint, Windows Media Center, Windows photo gallery, eBooks, PDF readers, and more.

Isreal, 5 Jan 2013 - eyeSight Mobile Technologies announced today that the company’s intuitive and natural gesture-control capabilities are included in Lenovo’s exciting new range of Ideapad Ultrabooks. The first device to incorporate the technology is the unique IdeaPad Yoga, the world’s first multi-mode Ultrabook, which features a 360-degree hinge that allows users to effortlessly flip their device from a laptop to a tablet, a free-standing ‘tent’ or even ‘stand’ configuration for total versatility.

The Yoga, is the first multi-mode Ultrabook of its kind, and provides a high level of flexibility between work and play. The Yoga is primed with rich audio-visual features including Dolby® Home Theatre, 13.3” high-definition IPS display, gesture control, up to Intel® Core™ i7 processor and a ten-point multi-touch screen (Click here for an embeddable video.) Running up to Windows 8 Pro, the IdeaPad Yoga provides the ideal platform for touch and gesture control.

eyeSight’s gesture recognition technology can be used to interact with several of the Yoga’s core functions, including its media player, photo gallery, Powerpoint and PDF reader, with simple hand movements used to browse documents or skip tracks from a distance of up to 70cm. There’s no complicated set up, and the experience is so simple, intuitive and seamless that it feels totally natural to the user.
“We anticipate a future where users will expect to be able to interact with their computer simply using whatever input method is most convenient for them. The Yoga is a bold step towards this future,” said Gideon Shmuel, CEO, eyeSight. “It provides all of the traditional inputs that are optimum for certain activities, such as a touch pad and keyboard, together with a unique screen that can be angled to any situation. And our technology brings an extra dimension of control, letting you browse through notes, movies or pictures without even touching the screen. This is the kind of versatility people want.”
eyeSight’s wider technology portfolio offers a broad range of features including the ability to recognise simple, low-effort, hand-gestures, highly-accurate hand and fingertip tracking, as well as facial recognition. eyeSight’s technology works well even in low lighting conditions and in areas with busy or moving backgrounds. The technology can be easily integrated across a range of operating systems, including Microsoft’s new Windows 8 interface.

eyeSight’s technology is compatible with a variety of digital devices and is currently available on the market in TVs, mobile phones and ultrabooks, as well as the recently launched world’s first gesture controlled set-top-box.

eyeSight welcomes enquiries from potential customers to discuss possible applications of its gesture technology in its products.

“Touch computing has quickly gone mainstream and Gideon Shmuel, eyeSight’s chief executive officer, is confident touch-free gesture control won’t be far behind.”

“To ensure a natural-feeling user experience, eyeSight has developed software that operates devices with small, intuitive, not mannered, gestures. The system is able to detect hand or fingertip movements in the midst of lots of image noise and under various lighting conditions.”

“eyeSight has deeply integrated its software with the Android, iOS, Linux and Windows operating systems, including a recently announced offering for Windows 8. OEMs can include eyeSight in their products without having to interact with the operating system code at all.”

For the full article on Nvidia’s Blog please click here

“….Watching the technology first hand at Wired’s office (running on a laptop), its ability to quickly differentiate between background activity and a subtle gesture is seriously impressive. Walking around a room demonstrating on his smartphone, CEO Gideon Shmuel only had to brush a hand in front of his screen and it immediately honed in on the gesture, reacting almost instantaneously”.

“It’s the combination of motions, tracking, face detection and robustness. I’m here taking a call, drinking my coffee, and then suddenly I do a gesture, and it reacts,” says Shmuel. “We constantly look at the environment and try to understand is it a motion, just a noise, or is it a plain gesture. We believe only in small movements.”

“The technology combats a phrase Shmuel says is being batted around the industry — “gesture fatigue”. If you’ve ever chanced past a room full of people battling each other on the Wii, manically gesticulating, you’ll know what he means. To demonstrate, Shmuel leans back in his chair, extends a clenched fist — the backend operating system picks it up immediately — then extends one finger. A small point appears above (which would be represented by a mouse cursor on a device), and he demonstrates how, with a small range of movement, he can now control the whole screen with ease. Gentle hand waves enable users to roll through screens and icons, and holding up a hand causes the cursor to materialise and dematerialise”…

For the full article on Wired.UK please click here