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CANESTA, INC.
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SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA – July 31, 2002 – Canesta, Inc., today took the wraps of its Projection Keyboard OEM Development Toolkit, a complete platform that enables original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to develop and integrate customized projection keyboards into their next-generation mobile and wireless devices. This will permit such products as smartphones, PDAs, tablet PC's, or cell phones, to come equipped with a full-sized, standard or custom keyboard that is created "out of thin air" by projected beams of light that paint the OEM-designed keyboard onto a nearby surface. The user's finger movements are sensed by Canesta's revolutionary electronic perception technology, embedded in a tiny sensor chip that the OEM implants in the product, in this first announced application of that technology.
The focus of the OEM Development Kit is to permit manufacturers to fully customize the layout of the projection keyboard that will result from using Canesta's chips. Although Canesta provides a ready-made template and software for projecting and reading the familiar QWERTY¹ keyboard, differently-organized layouts, such as for industrial applications, games, non-Roman alphabets, or entirely new input paradigms, are simple to accommodate. In addition to the keyboard, standard mouse functionality is available and can also be customized at the OEM's preference.
"Projection keyboards have the potential to change mobile and wireless devices from poor data input devices to much more powerful tools for the mobile user," said Nazim Kareemi, president and CEO of Canesta. "This toolkit is designed to make it possible for our customers – some of the largest OEM companies in the world – to develop projection keyboards for incorporation into their products that are precisely matched to their customers' requirements." Kareemi also mentioned that neither electronic projection technology, nor its use for projection keyboard applications, is limited to mobile devices. "Our whole goal is to make it possible for ordinary devices to 'see'," he stated.
The OEM Toolkit provides a platform for customizing projection keyboards and mice, prototyping and testing the feasibility of different designs and applications, and enables OEMs to better understand and appreciate electronic perception technology. Included are:
A datasheet describing the complete details of the OEM toolkit is available online at http://www.canesta.com/downloads/toolkit.pdf.
Purchasing the Canesta OEM Development Toolkit is the first step for developers who are planning to incorporate a projection keyboard – based on Canesta's electronic perception technology chips – into their devices. The OEM Development Toolkit is available now under license from Canesta.
Canesta is the inventor of a revolutionary, low-cost electronic perception technology that enables ordinary electronic devices to perceive and react to nearby objects or individuals in real time.
When sight-enabled with Canesta's unique electronic perception chips and software that sense the environment as 3-dimensional moving images, consumer, automotive, industrial, and medical products will gain functionality and ease of use not possible in an era when electronics were blind.
Canesta was founded in April 1999, and is located in San Jose, CA. The company has filed or has been granted in excess of 30 patents. Investment to date exceeds $20 million, from Carlyle Venture Partners, Apax Partners (formerly Patricof & Co Ventures, Inc.), JP Morgan Partners (formerly Chase Capital Partners), TechFund Capital, and Thales Corporate Ventures (formerly Thomson-CSF Ventures.) Canesta has over 40 employees. Canesta's Web site: www.canesta.com
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¹The name "QWERTY" for our typewriter keyboard comes from the first six letters in the top alphabet row (the one just below the numbers). It is also called the "Universal" keyboard for rather obvious reasons. (Source: http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/whyqwert.html)
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