Chip for recognizing 3D gestures through an electric field

Microchip Technology, a major US manufacturer of semiconductor devices, announced the release of the world's first chip MGC3130 , which is able to determine the position of an object in space by the change in the electric field. It sounds tricky, but in fact this technology promises a real breakthrough in the creation of interfaces. This means that you can create cheap devices without a camera that can accurately track the position of objects in space and recognize 3D gestures with a resolution of 150 dpi.



Today, 3D gesture recognition controllers are rare and usually work with a camera for pattern recognition. It is expensive and not very effective. That is why such devices are still not used everywhere in mobile phones. Among all manufacturers of microcircuits, only Qualcomm is the only company that released a chip for mobile devices that supports gesture recognition in the air (by processing images from the camera). In reality, this is really not a very effective solution, so the rest are not engaged in such developments.
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Qualcomm Snapdragon Chip Demonstration

Microchip Technology chip can change the market. It consumes a minimum of energy and is suitable for embedding in mobile phones, game joysticks and various consumer electronics. The key limitation is the range: the chip operates at a distance of no more than 15 cm from a moving object. Despite this, interface specialists are confident that this is truly a revolutionary technology.

Low power consumption allows you to leave the chip constantly in operation. In this case, it can be used, for example, to turn on the phone or unlock it. That is, as a password to turn on the phone, you can use a code combination of finger movements set in advance. Imagine you woke up, stretched out your hand in the direction of the phone, made only fingers known for you in the air - and the phone turned on.

Such systems can be embedded in automotive electronics, keyboards, light switches, control panels, medical devices, etc. This can be so convenient that in ten years there will be no controllers at all that require physical contact.

The chip for recognizing 3D gestures through an electric field was developed by German startup Ident Technology, which Microchip Technology bought a year ago.