Contract Gain

RNS Number : 2078P

Seeing Machines Limited

13 July 2010

 



Seeing Machines Limited

("Seeing Machines" or the "Company")

API PRODUCTION LICENSE acquired by Pillar Vison Inc.

Seeing Machines, a leading developer of advanced vision based industrial systems, announces a production license for the Company's API tracking software suite has been acquired by Pillar Vision Inc., of Athens, AL, USA. 

Pillar Vision, the developer and vendor of leading basketball sports training products, has for many years incorporated the Company's API software tools into their Noah Select products.  Building on that long relationship the new license is a revenue sharing royalty based agreement allowing for the use of the Company's API suite within their new Noah Instant product range. Noah Select and Noah Instant products are devices used in training environments that assist basketball players to significantly improve their goal shooting capabilities and performance.

The next generation Noah Instant product builds on the successes and world leading reputation of the Noah Select product. It has been designed for mass market appeal across the full spectrum of high schools, colleges and community basketball courts bringing the revolutionary Noah training techniques to basketball players of all levels.

John Carter, CEO of Pillar Vision said "The API tracking tools from Seeing Machines are themselves the very finest such tools available on the market today.  The ease of incorporating the tools into our product development and the quality and robustness of the object tracking provided by the API were key attributes that enabled the rapid development of our Noah Instant product. This allowed us to bring the product to market much more quickly than would be possible otherwise.  We are very pleased to continue our relationship with Seeing Machines through this partnership and we look forward to enhanced mutual successes ahead derived from the significantly expanded market addressed by Noah Instant."

Nick Cerneaz, CEO of Seeing Machines commented: "Our commercial relationship with Pillar Vision extends over more than 5 years now, and we have seen the Noah products develop significantly in this time. We are very pleased to be able to support their latest product through this new API license and look forward to renewed growth in this sector of our business."

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Enquiries:

Seeing Machines Limited	Nick Cerneaz, CEO           [phone]
Daniel Stewart & Company plc	Oliver Rigby                       [phone]
Walbrook PR Ltd [phone]	Ben Knowles                     [phone]                                                 [e-mail]

--- Information for Editors ---

About Pillar Vision, Inc.

More information about Pillar Vision Inc., and the Noah Instant product is available from their web site www.pillarvision.com.

About Seeing Machines Limited

Seeing Machines is a leading developer of advanced vision based industrial systems, specializing in automotive, medical, entertainment and research applications.  More information is available from our web site: www.seeingmachines.com.  

New US Patent Granted

A new US patent (US 7,653,213B2) was granted to Seeing Machines earlier this year, 26 January 2010.  Entitled Eye Tracking System and Method, the patent describes methods to improve the reliability and robustness of object tracking under certain circumstances.  This technology is especially important in applications that have limited hardware resources (such as limited computer processing power and/or low-to-standard video frame rates for example, such as in the Noah Instant product mentioned above).  The methods are useful across a wide range of applications and are thus incorporated into our API tools to provide this support.

This patent provides an enabling technology for many applications, including advanced 3D autostereoscopic visualization techniques.  Following the successes of a number of recent 3D entertainment experiences and events (most notably the movie Avatar™) 3D visualization has become much more mainstream and is today a very active area of technology development.  The faceAPI products are being used by developers within their efforts to develop such products.  Furthermore the Company's DSS product roadmap includes future advanced heads-up-display (HUD) safety feedback features for drivers that are directly supported by this underlying technology.  The patent itself describes low level 'building blocks' that enable such end uses, and forms an important part of our total intellectual property portfolio and forward strategy.

About faceAPI

Seeing Machines develops world-class face tracking algorithms for finding and tracking the movement of faces in video streams. faceAPI allows the seamless deployment of that technology within third party products and services.

In addition to a non-commercial license (see further details below), Seeing Machines offers two tiers of commercial license for access to the faceAPI:

·    Developer's Kit (DevKit) licenses, and

·    Production licenses.

DevKit licenses are sold on a per seat basis with recurring maintenance and support fees, and allow third parties to develop products incorporating the faceAPI technology.  In order to distribute a product incorporating the faceAPI (which necessarily requires redistributing the faceAPI itself), a third party must acquire a Production License to the faceAPI, which is negotiated in each case with the third party developer on a revenue sharing / royalty basis.

faceAPI's advanced capabilities allow developers to rapidly build new and exciting products with very rich and interactive man-machine interfaces. We are surrounded by machines and computers and we use them in many ways every day, yet they are extremely poor at understanding us. Whereas human beings have evolved significant capacity to observe and process interactions with other people, using body language and facial expression recognition with ease, traditional computer based systems are completely detached and operate without any real awareness of the "human" elements of our relationship with them.   

For a machine or piece of software, understanding a human face is a difficult technical challenge. Seeing Machines has solved many of the traditional problems associated with fast, accurate tracking of faces and facial features (such as lips, eyebrows, nostrils and eye corners), and these form some of the very building blocks of advanced computer based systems that are capable of interacting with humans in a more human way. faceAPI is a turn-key solution that offers these capabilities to developers today.

faceAPI's unique approach to face tracking delivers 3D data on faces in real-time, even with a standard webcam.  faceAPI has a standard software interface for ease of integration into third party developments and is provided with full technical support and documentation for all commercial licenses. 

faceAPI has been licensed to customers all over the world in industries spanning security, training and education, entertainment, sports, general computing, industrial systems and robotics, gaming, aerospace, transportation and 3D visualization. The range of applications is limited only by a developer's imagination.

Note:  In addition to the two commercial license tiers (the DevKit and Production licenses) Seeing Machines also offer a free non-commercial license for the faceAPI.  This version, whilst feature limited and extensively labelled with Seeing Machines corporate branding, provides an easy mechanism for third parties with a potential interest in using faceAPI commercially to initially explore the solution risk-free.  This version also greatly increases the market awareness of faceAPI and helps to promote many sales of the DevKit, and then onwards to Production licenses.  The non-commercial faceAPI product can be accessed from the faceAPI website: www.seeingmachines.com/product/faceapi/downloads/.

 

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