Oculus VR Inc on Thursday announced a deal to buy an Israel-based startup specializing in technology that can track hand movements.
Oculus expects the purchase of Pebbles Interfaces to add momentum to its development of virtual-reality (VR) technology and boost its Rift VR head gear.
Pebbles has spent five years developing technology that uses optics, sensors and software to detect and track hand movements, according to Oculus.
“At Pebbles Interfaces, we’ve been focused on pushing the limits of digital sensing technology to accelerate the future of human-computer interaction,” Pebbles chief technology officer Nadav Grossinger said in an Oculus blog post.
“Through micro-optics and computer vision, we hope to improve the information that can be extracted from optical sensors, which will help take virtual reality to the next level,” he said.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Oculus, which is owned by Facebook Inc, said that over time, technology breakthroughs “will unlock new human interaction methods in VR and revolutionize the way people communicate in virtual worlds.”
Oculus has aimed squarely at gamers with Rift headsets that it plans to begin selling early next year.
Last month at the world’s premier gaming trade show, the company also showed its prototype Touch Half Moon controllers that gave virtual-world hands to people wearing Rift head gear.
Meanwhile, Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC Corp (宏達電) was said to be seeking cooperation with Israel-based Replay Technologies Inc for new VR technologies used in the HTC Vive headset, the Chinese-language magazine Business Next reported on Saturday last week.
The company plans to sell the new virtual-reality headset, developed jointly with US video game developer Valve Corp, in the second half of this year, the report said.
HTC declined to comment on the magazine’s story.
Additional reporting by CNA
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said it would work with US chipmaker Intel Corp to jointly develop and deploy next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and intelligent computing platforms in a move to capture booming demand for AI computing systems. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), said in a statement that the partnership would combine its global manufacturing scale, system integration expertise and AI data center deployment capabilities with Intel’s strengths in processor architecture, silicon technologies and software ecosystem. The companies said they plan to work on equipment used in AI data centers, including server racks powered by
RSS