Gesture recognition company eyeSight raises $4.2M

The company is backed by CEVA and Mitsui

Israeli gesture recognition technology platform eyeSight Mobile Technologies has snagged $4.2 million in a Series B round of funding led by CEVA, Inc., with help from Mitsui & Co Global Investment Ltd, as well as eyeSight’s largest investor, Eli Talmor, founder and chairman of the Coller Institute of Private Equity at the London Business School.  As part of the deal, eyeSight will make its gesture recognition and finger tracking software available to users of the CEVA-MM3000 ISP and video platform.

EyeSight says it plans to use the new funds to expand its reach and enter new markets.  The investment from Mitsui will help the company expand its presence in the Japanese market.

The Israeli company was in the news just two months ago when it was announced that the Korean phone maker Pantech had plans to integrate eyeSight’s gesture recognition technology into its devices.  For anyone who’s ever tried answering a call on their touchscreen phone with gloves on, or with messy hands, or while trying to drive, this sounds like a dream.

Of course, anyone who owns or has played around with a Kinect knows that gesture recognition technology is not new.  But eyeSight’s technology is unique in that it leverages the existing camera in any device so that no hardware changes are required, and upgrades can be made through software updates.

Additionally, while most gesture recognition apps tend to be major power sucks, eyeSight’s ultra low power technology is expected to improve the system power efficiency of the CEVA-MM3000 platform by 20 fold.

“This equity investment in eyeSight is aimed at expanding the addressable markets for our CEVA-MM3000 platform to include the burgeoning embedded vision and scene analysis arenas,” said CEVA CEO Gideon Wertheizer, in a statement.  “We are strategically focused to further enhance our DSP and platform ecosystems, providing our customers with broader solutions to enable true product differentiation and to shorten their time to market."