Oct. 21, 2009 (Business Wire) -- The pioneer and leading provider of mass-market 3-D image sensors, Canesta, Inc. today announced it has raised $16 million in additional capitalization. Joining returning investors Carlyle Growth Partners, Hotung Venture Group, and Venrock are two new strategic investors – Quanta Computer Inc. (2382.TW), the world’s largest manufacturer of notebook computers, and SMSC (NASDAQ:SMSC), a leading provider of smart mixed-signal connectivity solutions.

Canesta has invented a family of tiny CMOS 3-D “camera” chips that can provide a real-time, 3-D “depth map” of the surrounding area to PCs, consumer electronics devices such as televisions, videogames, or smartphones. The technology enables revolutionary 3-D user experiences that dramatically improve device functionality and convenience, and are just plain fun to use. The strategic investments by PC maker Quanta and chipmaker SMSC, in particular, signal an increasing interest worldwide in applying true 3-D human-interface device (HID) capabilities to personal computer applications.

“The emergence of 3-D ‘natural’ interfaces in PCs – such as ‘touchless’ gesture controls – as well as other immersive applications, has been inevitable,” commented Jim Spare president and CEO of Canesta. “While significant advances in computer processing and graphics continue to be made, consumers are proving increasingly indifferent to these as product differentiators. As a consequence, we are seeing an immense shift in focus by OEMs to radical innovation and improvement in the user experience, as a way of gaining competitive advantage.”

Moreover, Spare explained, current breakaway products in the mobile space that utilize multi-touch, and market-changing products in gaming that incorporate accelerometers for positional inputs, provide a sneak preview of what will be possible with Canesta-based 3-D natural interfaces. “We are on the verge of a decade of innovation in human interfaces,” predicted Spare.

Earlier this year, Hitachi and Canesta demonstrated a television that enables consumers to navigate an array of television-based services using a visual 3-D interface and natural “gesture-based” controls (www.roeder-johnson.com/RJDocs/Canesta-Demonstrates-Natural-3D-Interface-At-D.html).

Moreover, gesture-controlled PC interfaces have been featured for several years in several popular television series such as CSI: Miami – where characters sift through page after page of forensic data simply with the wave of a hand. Because of such influences, Spare says that the public is “suitably primed” for fully-immersive user experiences that go “beyond multi-touch” and do not require the user to hold any controller in his or her hand.

There are as many applications of 3-D natural Interfaces on the PC as there are applications for PCs themselves, Spare says.