Together with existing investors MIG Funds and Danube Equity, Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH (RBVC) today announced the completion of a 7.1 million Euro investment round in IDENT Technology AG. The investment supports strong growth plans and the launch of a 3D gesture recognition chip.
Gilching, Germany, September 5, 2011. IDENT Technology AG, the technology leader in intelligent e-field based sensor solutions for the realization of innovative user interfaces for the consumer electronics industry, is pleased to welcome RBVC among its investors. Existing investors MIG Funds and Danube Equity also participated in the round.
“Our Z-Sense technology is all about making the user experience natural, intuitive, simple and fun”, said Dr. Roland Aubauer, Chief Technology Officer and speaker of the board of IDENT. “With our proximity technology already in production,” he said, “we have decided to take our game changing innovations further and develop our own GestIC chip for three-dimensional (3D) gesture control.”
The GestIC, designed as a highly integrated system-on-chip (SoC), is aimed at the fast-growing 3D gesture control market. It addresses a broad range of consumer electronics devices, such as tablet computers or mobile phones, mobile computers or game controllers. The company’s patented and proprietary e-field based technology allows real-time tracking of free space hand or finger movements in front of a device or display. The same SoC enables user interfaces ranging from simple one-dimensional (1D) touch detection over sophisticated 3D gesture recognition to dynamic positional data of the user’s hand in free space. This information is translated into any type of pre-processed user input commands. Apart from the GestIC’s true 3D sensing capabilities, the advantages lie in the achievable detection range, high resolution, robustness and the very low power consumption.
The participation of Robert Bosch Venture Capital demonstrates its support of IDENT’s strategic vision. Dr. Dieter Kraft, Investment Partner for the European Region of RBVC, said: “We are impressed by the technological and commercial achievements of IDENT, and by the spirit and the capabilities of its team. We are convinced that their technology solutions will make groundbreaking contributions to the world of human machine interfaces. Most of all, we expect IDENT to prove that magically simple user interfaces are not only the territory of a few large companies. We are happy to support their mission, also as an active member of the company’s supervisory board.”
Michael Motschmann, Chief Executive Officer of IDENT’s main shareholder MIG Funds adds: ”The investment by RBVC, the venture arm of one of the world leading innovators, is a strong proof of IDENT’s unique Intellectual Property. Having such a strong and experienced partner on board will enable IDENT to further achieve their technology’s full market potential.”
Christopher Kampshoff, Chief Financial Officer of IDENT concludes: “We are proud that we could engage RBVC for our goals and are looking forward to a business, financial and technical collaboration to bringing GestIC to the mass market in 2012. With our global customers we are currently working on the creation and near-term launch of a new generation of mobile devices which the industry has not yet seen.”
About IDENT Technology AG
IDENT Technology AG is the industry’s leading provider of intellectual property and semiconductor products for electrical near field sensing solutions. The products enable intelligent proximity sensing and real-time 3D gesture control for the consumer electronics industry, including mobile devices, gaming and other input devices. The company’s scalable and patented Z-Sense technology allows realization of disruptive human interface features, making products much smarter than previously possible and enabling natural intuitive use. IDENT Technology’s solutions combined with the EZApplication software suite containing a library of 1D touch to 3D gesture recognition solutions lets manufacturers quickly bring to market products which no longer require buttons or keys to switch a device on or off, to start applications, to point, click, zoom, scroll and more on any consumer electronics device.
