July 29, 2015 | By Simon

Since raising more than $1 million dollars from over 2,700 backers on Kickstarter for their Structure Sensor for iPad back in 2013,  Boulder, Colorado and San Francisco, California-based Occipital has been busy further developing and refining their 3D scanning and capturing technologies.  Prior to the release of their Structure Scanner, the company became a hit thanks to their RedLaser barcode scanning app and 360 Panorama app - both of what became mainstays in the iTunes App Store.

Today, the company has announced that they’re moving even further into the 3D scanning and computer vision space after having raised a $13 million Series B round from investors including Intel Capital, Shea Ventures, Grishin Robotics and previous investor Foundry Group. In total, the new funding round brings the company’s total funding to $14 million to put into the research and development of next-generation 3D scanning and capture technologies.

According to Occipital CEO and co-founder Jeff Powers, the new funding will allow the  company to “rapidly advance the Structure platform, and accelerate initiatives to bring spatial computing to everyday life.”

Until recently, the company has been focusing on their combination hardware-software package, which has become the bulk of their revenue.  According to Powers, while the Structure Sensor generates a 3D depth map, a large portion of the user experience - including 3D user interfaces and 3D models -  is powered by the company’s custom software, which will ultimately be moving towards augmented reality experiences.     

“Our hardware and software platform is being increasingly adopted in industries including medicine, architecture, visual effects, and 3D printing, and by industry leaders like 3D Systems, ILM, and many others,” explains Powers.

“Beyond that, we feel we’re just at the beginning of what our software can do.  When we launched Structure SDK, it could not even capture objects in color.  Now we can capture photorealistic large objects, and explore environments with unbounded tracking.  The SDK is only dubbed version ‘0.5,’ so expect it to get much more rich as we approach 1.0.”

As we continue to move forward towards augmented and virtual reality experiences for  both professional and entertainment-related purposes, it’s no surprise that investors are keeping their eyes open for proven 3D technology platforms such as Occipital’s for next-generation spatial computing.    

“We believe that as computer vision enables your devices to 3D reconstruct and understand your surroundings, it will unleash a disruptive new wave of computing where software can operate over real world spaces,” added the company.

“We call it spatial computing, and it’s bigger than just us.  This new funding will allow us to rapidly advance the Structure platform, and accelerate initiatives to bring spatial computing to everyday life.”


 

 

Posted in 3D Scanning

 

 

Maybe you also like:


   





Leave a comment:

Your Name:

 


Subscribe us to

3ders.org Feeds 3ders.org twitter 3ders.org facebook   

About 3Ders.org

3Ders.org provides the latest news about 3D printing technology and 3D printers. We are now seven years old and have around 1.5 million unique visitors per month.

News Archive