Gestigon (stylized as gestigon) is a software development company founded in September 2011 by Sascha Klement, Erhardt Barth, and Thomas Martinetz. The company develops software for gesture control and body tracking based on 3D depth data. , Gestigon is developing augmented reality and automotive solutions for

Audi Audi AG () is a German automotive manufacturer of luxury vehicles headquartered in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, Germany. As a subsidiary of its parent company, the Volkswagen Group, Audi produces vehicles in nine production facilities worldwide. Th ...

Renault
and

Volkswagen Volkswagen (),English: , . abbreviated as VW (), is a German motor vehicle manufacturer headquartered in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1937 by the German Labour Front under the Nazi Party and revived into a global brand post-W ...

. The company is also working on AR/ VR headsets as well as consumer electronics and smart home devices. In March 2017, Gestigon was acquired by

Valeo Valeo is a French global automotive supplier headquartered in France, listed on the Paris Stock Exchange ( CAC-40 Index). It supplies a wide range of products to automakers and the aftermarket. The Group employs 113,600 people in 33 countries wo ...

, a French automotive supplier.

History

Sascha Klement worked as a student assistant and Ph.D. student for the professors Thomas Martinetz and Erhardt Barth, who have been developing software solutions based on time-of-flight sensors at the

University of Lübeck The University of Lübeck is a research university in Lübeck, Northern Germany which focuses almost entirely on medicine and sciences with applications in medicine. In 2006, 2009 and 2016, the University of Lübeck was ranked No. 1 in medicine am ...

since 2002. Together they founded Gestigon in 2011 with seed-funding from

High-Tech Gründerfonds The High-Tech Gründerfonds (or HTGF) is a public-private venture capital investment firm based in Bonn, Germany. High-Tech Gründerfonds is an early stage seed investor, focused on high potential high-tech start-ups. The seed financing is provid ...

, Mittelständische Beteiligungsgesellschaft Schleswig-Holstein and local business angels. In March 2012 Moritz von Grotthuss joined the company as advisor and later became CEO, being considered a late-founder. The same month, Gestigon received an Innovation Award at CeBIT 2012, being one of the 15 startups to receive an award out of 276 candidates. In January 2013, Gestigon participated at CES in

Las Vegas Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas ...

and, later that year, also at

TechCrunch Disrupt TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately $ ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. The next year

Visteon Visteon Corporation (VC) is an American global automotive electronics supplier and Fortune 500 company spun off from the Ford Motor Company in 2000. Visteon is composed of multiple businesses that design, engineer, and manufacture vehicle cockpit ...

and

used Gestigon's gestures solutions in their products presented at

CES 2014 CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event typ ...

and CeBIT 2014 where it won the “CeBIT Innovation Award”. Further public displays of Gestigon's technologies include Audi at CES 2015 and

CES 2016 CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event typi ...

; Volkswagen and Infineon. Gestigon launched its Virtual Reality solution Carnival at the TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco in September 2015 using an Oculus Rift and different depth sensors. The first demo using a mobile device was done at the CES 2015. Gestigon has partnered with several companies that develop hardware solutions, especially depth sensors, to provide sensing solutions. In 2015 Gestigon partnered with Inuitive, a 3D computer vision and image processors developer, to create a VR unit. The system was presented at CES 2016 assembled on an

Oculus Rift Oculus Rift is a discontinued line of virtual reality headsets developed and manufactured by Oculus VR, a division of Meta Platforms, released on March 28, 2016. In 2012 Oculus initiated a Kickstarter campaign to fund the Rift's development, af ...

development kit. In July 2015, Gestigon closed its Series A financing round from with nbr technology ventures GmbH as a primary investor headed by Fabian von Kuenheim and High-Tech Gründerfonds and Vorwerk Direct Selling Ventures. Fabian von Kuenheim became chairman of the advisory board which was also composed of the German entrepreneur Holger G. Weiss and the French investor Gunnar Graef. In March 2017, Gestigon was acquired by

, a French automotive supplier. In March 2017, Gestion developed software that recognizes driving gestures.

Products

Gestigon develops software that works with 3D sensors to recognize human gestures, poses and biometrical features in real time, such as: * Gecko, a feature tracker that tracks an individual and measures their biometric features, * Flamenco, a piece of software for finger and hand gesture control, * Carnival SDK, software for augmented reality and

virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), e ...

, which allows users to see and use their hands in virtual interfaces. Gestigon's solutions are based on skeleton recognition. Their software recognizes body parts in 3D data to make the recognition faster and more accurate. The software is sensor-agnostic and can work based on the data from any depth module using time-of-flight, stereo or structured light technologies.

References

{{reflist Middleware Virtual reality companies Augmented reality Software companies of Germany Companies based in Schleswig-Holstein Companies established in 2011 Gesture recognition Software companies established in 2011 Companies based in Sunnyvale, California