Launch of world's first glasses-free 3D laptop

RNS Number : 5344K

Seeing Machines Limited

18 July 2011

 

18 July 2011

SEEING MACHINES (the "Company")

faceAPI Underpins New Toshiba Glasses-Free 3D Laptop

Seeing Machines Limited (AIM:SEE), a leading developer of face, eye and facial feature tracking systems for the consumer electronics, scientific and driver safety markets, announces the arrival of Toshiba's new Qosmio F750, the world's first 3D laptop that requires no special glasses for watching movies or playing games in 3D.  Seeing Machines will receive a royalty for each unit sold. 

Seeing Machines' faceAPI is a key technological component underpinning the glasses-free 3D capability, allowing the laptop's built-in webcam to track the viewer's eye position. Initial reviewers write that the tracking is accurate and quick to respond, and Engadget bloggers wrote that videos they watched on the F750 "were pretty mouth-watering".

Ken Kroeger, CEO of Seeing Machines commented: "First revealed at this year's CES, this is only the beginning of a new era in Glasses-free 3D.  We have worked closely with SuperD, a world leader in display technology and glasses-free 3D, to bring this new technology to fruition and in March we announced the contract between the companies.  The faceAPI/SuperD solution is being looked at closely by global players in the portable and tablet device market who are interested in this glasses-free liberating capability. SuperD selected faceAPI as it is uniquely able to provide face tracking with the required accuracy and reliability, using a standard camera, and without being overly demanding of the computer's processor.  We believe this launch is the first of many and will provide strong impetus for growth of the faceAPI business particularly in the consumer electronics market."

Enquiries:

Seeing Machines Limited	Ken Kroeger, CEO	[phone]
Daniel Stewart & Company plc	Oliver Rigby	[phone]
Walbrook PR Ltd	Bob Huxford 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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