Canesta, Inc., a provider of mass-market 3-D image sensors, Wednesday said that it has raised $16 million in additional capitalization. The company plans to use the new funds for business expansion and working capital to meet the needs of its consumer product and personal computer customer-base.
The company also said that two new strategic investors, Quanta Computer Inc., the world's largest manufacturer of notebook computers, and SMSC (SMSC), a provider of smart mixed-signal connectivity solutions, will join with investors Carlyle Growth Partners, Hotung Venture Group, and Venrock.
The strategic investments by Quanta and SMSC signal an increasing interest worldwide in applying 3-D human-interface device, or HID, capabilities to personal computer applications, the company noted.
Canesta also said that it has invented a family of tiny CMOS 3-D "camera" chips that can provide a real-time, 3-D "depth map" of the surrounding area to PCs, consumer electronics devices such as televisions, videogames, or smartphones.
According to Canasta, earlier this year, the company and Hitachi had demonstrated a television that enables consumers to navigate an array of television-based services using a visual 3-D interface and natural "gesture-based" controls.
Some of the applications made possible by Canesta's 3-D electronic perception chips and technology include hands-free gesture control, robust and accurate facial recognition for user identification and security, background substitution for video conferencing and "virtual sets", avatar control for 3-D virtual communities, augmented reality and immersive personalized advertising.
Canesta also holds over 40 granted patents for a broad range of breakthroughs in its electronic perception technology. These include innovations in silicon implementation, optics, key applications such as hands-free gesture control, and many others.
SMSC closed Tuesday's trading at $21.14, down $0.08, on a volume of 133,400 shares.
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