Arik Hesseldahl

Recent Posts by Arik Hesseldahl

Qualcomm Grabs Part of GestureTek, Envisions Gesture-Based Controls on Phones

Qualcomm, the wireless chip maker, said today it has acquired some assets of GestureTek, a privately held Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company in the gesture-recognition field.

Terms were not disclosed, but Qualcomm is taking control of certain parts of GestureTek’s business geared toward smartphones, while leaving behind some non-phone-related parts concerned with public displays and digital signage.

The plan is to add GestureTek’s technology to future versions of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors for smartphones, Steve Mollenkopf, a Qualcomm executive vice president, said in a statement.

I hadn’t heard of GestureTek before today, but I did find a video from last year demonstrating its Momo engine. The technology follows the movement of your head or face or hands as part of the user interface, so you can answer a call, play a game or turn a page without having to touch a button or the screen.

The demonstration below, which is about a year old, shows the technology built into a mobile gaming device. I wonder what it would look like on a phone.

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