LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--PointGrab Ltd. and Sunplus Innovation Technology (SunplusIT) today announced their partnership to bring PointGrab’s PointSwitchTM gesture control solution to the home appliances market worldwide. This follows PointGrab’s recent unveiling of the new PointSwitchTM experience that enables consumers to control home appliances from a distance just by pointing at them. Users will now be able to turn lights or the air conditioner on or off, as well as enable more complex controls such as dimming the brightness, partially drawing the shades, or increasing the temperature on the thermostat from a distance. This collaboration will provide an innovative electronic module that makes home appliances easier to operate and consume less energy. The technology will be available for private demonstration during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Jan. 6-10, 2014. In the meantime, the PointSwitchTM product video can be viewed at: http://youtu.be/J0tK3-Fbbfk.
“Gesture control has been available on consumer electronic devices for a while now, so we are excited to partner with PointGrab, a leader in this field, to bring this experience to new markets,” said Chih-Hao Kung, President of SunplusIT. “This collaboration will bring natural gesture control to the home environment and revolutionize the way consumers operate their home appliances.”
PointGrab and SunplusIT are initially targeting lighting control and air conditioning OEMs for residential and commercial segments. Both companies will jointly offer OEMs a unique solution that is based on a sophisticated computer vision algorithms embedded in a low-cost high-performance ISP that can be used for both retrofits and new installations. The electronic module allows home residents to control devices such as lighting fixtures or air conditioners by simply pointing at them. Detection of human presence and location optimizes the operation of the device and energy consumption.
“We expect that in the next few years gesture controlled home appliances will be part of many households around the world,” said Haim Perski, CEO of PointGrab. “Unlike other Smart Home solutions that can only be controlled via a mediator, gesture control for home appliances offers a much more immediate, natural, and convenient experience around the house.”
The products offered range from the high-end PointSwitchTM v1800 that also includes smart energy saving capabilities, to the more affordable PointSwitchTM v360. Both products work in all lighting conditions, as well as darkness, and can detect human pointing up to 15 feet away from a wide angle or different locations within the room. PointSwitchTM products will be available during 2014.
PointGrab and SunplusIT will be demonstrating the new PointSwitchTM solution at CES in an executive suite at the Las Vegas Hotel (LVH). To set up a business meeting and a demo please contact sales@pointgrab.com
About SunplusIT
SunplusIT is a leading fabless IC (Integrated Circuit) design hardware company in Taiwan that rooted from Sunplus Technology with over 20 year experiences of research and development and strong IP portfolios. With spearhead market intelligence, SunplusIT’s dedicated team exploits the state of art design methodology to deploy products that go above and beyond its competition. It has dominating market presence in MCU, intelligent image processor and is on its overture to establish the stronghold in home appliance market with its strategic partner PointGrab.
SunplusIT’s single-chip stereo image signal processor SPCA2100 is the world's first and the only commercially available solution with two signal pipelines that can simultaneously process two HD (High Definition) CMOS imagers without compromising its processing performance. With the glory of industry well-known advanced video image quality, SunplusIT’s technical team devises special hardwired algorithm that not only the processor is able to process nominal imagers to perform in high dynamic range but also process RGB-IR imagers without IR cut filter to deliver video in complete dark zero lux ambient environment while overcomes color crosstalk to present ultimate high quality color video under nominal lighting. SunplusIT’s advanced image processing engines are equipped with the flexibility to interface with all world leading CMOS imagers supplied by Aptina, OmniVision, Samsung, Sony, etc. and excel behind every great video camera around the world.
About PointGrab
PointGrab is a leader in advanced gesture recognition software solutions offering a natural and intuitive way of interacting with consumer electronic (CE) devices and home appliances. PointGrab’s software solution enables any CE device including TVs, PCs, Tablets, and Smartphones or home lighting and air conditioning to be operated by gesture control using finger, hand and two hands shapes and movements. Frost & Sullivan recently recognized PointGrab’s groundbreaking solutions with a 2013 European Technology Innovation Award.
PointGrab’s new AirTouchTM for CE devices and PointSwitchTM for home appliances, together with the existing Hybrid Action Recognition technology, are superior in their accuracy, reliability, range and lighting conditions, all while using a standard camera.
PointGrab‘s market-leading solutions have been commercially available since 2010 and are currently integrated into millions of consumer devices through many of the world’s top OEMs, brands and developers such as Samsung, TCL, Lenovo, Acer, Skyworth, Fujitsu, Intel and others.
