faceAPI Production License signed

RNS Number : 6942D

Seeing Machines Limited

28 March 2011

 



SEEING MACHINES ("the Company")

Seeing Machines powers next generation (glasses-free) 3D for
consumer electronics products

Seeing Machines Limited (AIM:SEE), a leading developer of advanced vision based industrial systems, announces a new faceAPI Production License has been signed with Shenzhen Super Perfect Optics Limited (SuperD), based in Shenzhen, China. 

Top branded laptop computer makers exhibited the SuperD glasses-free 3D solution incorporating the Company's faceAPI technology at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January this year and CeBIT in Hannover earlier this month.  The first consumer products are expected to be available in mid 2011.   Seeing Machines and SuperD have been working together for approximately 12 months during the development of SuperD's new glasses-free 3D display solutions which include Seeing Machines' faceAPI.  The Production License Agreement announced today will see Seeing Machines receive a royalty for every laptop computer, computer monitor or all-in-one-PC product that contains the SuperD glasses-free 3D display solution incorporating faceAPI.

Johnny Wang, Vice President Product Marketing Group, SuperD commented: "The development of our 3D display solution has been greatly assisted by the unique capabilities of Seeing Machine's faceAPI product. We extensively evaluated the entire eye-tracking market and selected faceAPI as our preferred solution as it provided the best balance of performance and precision.  The terrific working relationship with Seeing Machines over the last year has also greatly assisted the rapid development of our product.  We now look forward to the deployment of our glasses-free 3D solution incorporating the faceAPI, where we expect the technology to power literally millions of devices from laptop computers to monitors to all-in-one-PC products produced by some of the biggest name manufacturers in the market."

Nick Cerneaz, CEO of Seeing Machines commented: "Our faceAPI commercialisation strategy is to license the product to developers and manufacturers of high volume and value products.  This new production license with SuperD is a significant market validation of both the product itself and our business model.  We are very excited to be working with SuperD at the birth of this new imaging modality, and we look forward to further enhancing and enabling faceAPI's 3D visualisation capabilities as we continue to develop the product itself and its markets.  This agreement springboards the faceAPI business into consumer-scale license volumes, and underlines the capabilities of the technology to leverage significant licensing revenue into the future."

Enquiries:

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

--- Information for Editors ---

About SuperD

SuperD is a leading glasses-free 3D solution provider.  More information about SuperD is available from their website at www.SuperD3D.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.   

About the Seeing Machines and SuperD glasses-free 3D solution

SuperD's visualization technology uses faceAPI to accurately track the location of the viewer's eyes and then update and present the 3D video stream optimized for the viewer's exact location at each moment.  This compelling and naturalistic 3D display solution is able to render both 2D and 3D regions on the same screen at the same time, allowing users to watch a 3D video or play a 3D computer game whilst simultaneously interacting with 2D content, for example the instant messaging streams within the game or other standard desktop applications.  Using the system's built-in Webcam, faceAPI allows the visualization technology to achieve this without the use of special 3D glasses, yet accommodates smoothly a user's normal eye glasses if they happen to be wearing them.

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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