It’s a Wii without the $250 console. It’s virtual Pong and so much more. Any object is now an input device, even your fingers. Bang, bang! But there’s no better way to introduce you to CamSpace than by letting you watch the demo video below:
CamTrax’s core technology is a pure software solution that allows nearly any ordinary PC webcam (95% are supported) to track up to four objects—even as small as 5mm—in real-time and with very high accuracy and reliability. (It works only on Windows). Locking and tracking (X, Y, and Z axes and angle) are all automatic. Yaron Tanne, founder & CEO of CamTrax Technologies, the company behind CamSpace, has been developing the technology practically single-handedly for three years in his apartment in Tel-Aviv.
Tanne claims that most of the algorithms used are in the public domain but have been enhanced. There are also completely new algorithms developed from scratch.
CamSpace requires an agent application to run locally in order to emulate a mouse, a keyboard, joystick, or other input device. Users can then program the emulation based on the game they want to control and the object(s) they want to control the game with. For example, one user could program a steering wheel for a racing game, where moving the wheel on the Z axis shifts the gears up and down. A different user can use two objects for the same game, programming the second object, say a coke bottle, to shift the gears.
Once a good portion of most popular games are emulated, the company will provide a portal where these emulations will be rated based on popularity and then offered for download.
Assuming there are no patent infringement issues, CamTrax could be a hit in several sectors, the most obvious one being gaming. While certainly the big game studios could take advantage of the technology, I can see a wider and quicker adoption among casual gaming entities such as Zynga and SGN. Cam-Trax could also find success in providing solutions for handicap individuals that cannot use standard input devices. Another application would be to emulate multi-touch control over media-centers. Some more ideas:
—Fitness programs using body movements
—Virtual instruments (air drums, xylophone, etc.)
—Drawing “in the air” applications for kids
These are just the tip of the iceberg… Remember, all you need is a standard webcam—that’s a VERY low barrier to entry these days.
I’ve had the chance to play with CamTrax’s technology on several occasions and it works like a charm. This is true even in low and changing light conditions—based on first-hand experience. It really is hard not to be impressed with the technology, especially seeing as it still has Alpha status.
The four-man team recently raised $200,000 in seed financing from angel investors and plans on raising a Series A round in the coming months.
In the meantime, the company is working on a developer platform which will allow the integration of CamTrax technology into casual games and mini-applications. Expect a follow-up post when this happens in the coming weeks.
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very nice
OMG
This is very cool. There is more and more stuff that makes MS windows actually a cool platform. Not for the UI or the system but for some new apps that are not (yet ) available on windows. Anyways, let me get back to play with my cross marked starbucks cup in front of my webcam…
I wonder what the legal battle field will be like …. them against Ninja Nintendo, hmmm
… seen this a few weeks ago …. pretty neat
Neat. This is why I used to read TechCrunch, 3 years ago! Great posts like this one… keep up the cool stuff and lose the boring reports about the same old “companies” we don’t care about.
a wii only costs 250 dollars…
Great to hear they took a small funding amount. A larger round would have probably bogged down their product development. I can’t wait to see what these guys produce.
Wii’s only cost $250
this is so cool….just dugg it and hope it spreads throughout the web universe!
Very cool… too bad it’s windows only.
@#8 finish the paragraph… they are preparing to raise an A round soon.
OMG, I can’t believe no one has bought these guys. Awesome tech, I can’t play FPS games via this technology.
Hmm, I wonder what my unused domains (camworld.org and camworld.net) would be worth to them.
Dude, that is sick.
An error in the first sentence. I’m not one of those people that jumps on TC or any other blog for typos or small grammatical errors (we’re all human), but FACTUAL errors are a different matter entirely, when it comes to journalism.
The Wii is $250.
Thanks for the interesting posts so far. I figure most of the people posting on this wall may know what its like to have a little bit of the entrepreneurial bug. Does anybody here run a small business or are currently in a start? Are you hoping to grow to the size of a Google, a Microsoft, an apple, a Nintendo, a TechCrunch? You might want to check out how the Natural Laws of the the universe and an understanding of quantum physics can really mentally train and condition you to rise to success like that of a Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Page and Sergei Brinn, etc. Check out this site more some tips:
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Old news, give credit to the real party
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/
$250 is the list price for the Wii. On Amazon it is going for $350. But I’ll change it.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer.....038;sr=8-1
no credits? http://quotably.com/TechCrunch/statuses/821805408
Great to see the continued innovation in the device space, users want to get beyond the limited machine inputs of keyboard and mice and are looking to transition to more natural user input like touch and gestures. These devices are going to lead to more exploration of NUI (natural user interface) design, check out http://www.uvlayer.com as an example and imagine the possibilities….
Finally the human penis can become a VR porn input device.
I’m serious. There’s a huge market here.
Unreal Tournament would be fun with certain types of matches, but is still no match for a mouse and keyboard. Very cool though. I saw a similar deal done last year, but not nearly as simple and compatible. I’m waiting for the mainstream game producers to do something with this for the PC. You still have to give props to Nintendo though.
cool… I saw that when this guys came to the Exit - Startupseeds for show there program.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWEEEEEEEEESOME!
Great project!!
Reminds me of this amazing project: http://www.virtual-drums.com/
The concept is simple: pick up the 2 sticks, visualize your 3D moves on the screen, and play music by moving your sticks! If you hit the virtual positions of the drums, cymbals or bass drum with the sticks then it will play the appropriate sound. The intensity of the sound depends on the speed of your moves: the faster you move, the louder the sound will be.
however I suspect camspace works only:
- with high end webcams (ie, >100$)
- great light
very impressive though…
omfg. a true leap in innovation. they win. period
Awesome stuff. Any idea on when it’s going to be available? I can’t wait to test it out on my webcam.
so fruckin awesome!
instant animated movies anyone?
This made its rounds on Twitter quite some time ago and was even so popular it made it onto the Twitturly home page.
@19 Fabricio Melo
Here is the same tweet on Twitturly, which was on 05/28/08 @ 10:05 am: http://twitturly.com/urlinfo/u.....a95e1dc06/
However, that tweet was far from the first. On twitter, it was first mentioned by aviv_revach on 05/25/08 at 10:46 am.
You can see that here: http://twitturly.com/urlinfo/u.....575bb527d/
CamTrax was even on Engadget:
http://twitturly.com/urlinfo/u.....c566add52/
Roi, this article was well written (your first on TechCrunch?), however you should have given credit to where you saw it.
Joel–thanks for your comment. Actually this is not my first post, there have been many others. I’ve been TC’s Israeli correspondent since August of ‘07
(http://www.crunchbase.com/person/roi-carthy)
In terms of credit: I actually first met the company 7 months ago when it was based out of the CEO’s apartment. While there has been some info about the company, this particular post has more in-depth info on what CamTrax has been doing and where they are heading than any other post on the blogsphere. Also, as I indicated at the bottom of the post TechCrunch will be the first to write about CamTrax’s developer platform–so stay tuned
seen this a few weeks ago
very nice
Sony need to get this technology into their PS3 SDK.
Amazing
@30 thx Joel
This is amazing. The possibilities are endless
@Roi Carthy (#31)
Thanks for the clarification. I look forward to reading about it.
I didn’t get that you had known about it for a while from the article. So I apologize for implying that you may have gotten the tip on this from one of the other recently mentioned articles.
Neat-o. I just did my Masters Thesis on pretty much the same ideas: physical/tangible input to virtual applications.
Cam-trax is just tracking shapes of same color. While this is a good implementation carried through to its logical conclusion, it’s not awfully hard to do. I like the soccer pong game though! Neat.
What I’ve done in my version is to let you use normal objects in their normal setting. I tested my ideas with billiards… You use a real pool cue stick and hit a real cue ball in order to play a virtual billiards / pool game. You get tactile feedback and can train for when you play on a real pool table.
A paper based on my work is being published at the ICME 2008 (http://www.icme2008.org) in Hannover, Germany this month.
I should contact these Cam-trax guys! Hi there! Drop me a line!
http://MixedRealityBilliards.com
Nice work on your implementation guys!
whoa
Man, can someone give me $250K please? I can write the same core sensing software in 1 week. Apps & demos two weeks after that. OK, how about $100K?
I wish I knew the first thing about getting funding for a startup. *sigh*
the founder is my brother!!
i’m so proud of him!
Well, this looks to me like an improved “Eye Toy ™”.
Well, Sony’s Eye Toy (on PS2) don’t track so small details but when you see games like EyeToy Anti-grav, it tracks movements from both arms (to control the arms of the character), of the head (to control movement) and player jump or duck (resulting in the same on the character)…
So, I don’t see so much new… and I see many risks of patent infrigment (Sony’s patents… which is a very bad news)…
Very nice work…..the possibilities are endless. In a side note; refering to comment #21: “the human penis can become a VR porn input device..”, the human penis is an “output” device, it’s the human vagina that’s the input device. Joy…..
Awesome. It may put me out of business but I’ll just start adding plastic & paper products in lieu of the controller.
I remember the EyeToy creator doing the same tracking demo in 2004 at Stanford (http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/040121.html), using colored objects like those in the video. Any patent there?
But I’ve never seen any game using such objects. EyeToy games most of the time tracks only movements or skin color.
20 years ago the Amiga Live! digitizer had some games that used human motion detection but it wasn’t a general solution like this is.
can I point the webcam at my naked bits and play sex games?
Have you heard of Nouse (Nose as Mouse) technology - enabling hands-free control for disabled using a web-cam? - http://www.videorecognition.com/e
When I see the finger tracking - why did I instantly invision the scene from Minority Report?