Sascha Klement worked as a student assistant and Ph.D. student for the professors Thomas Martinetz and Erhardt Barth, who have been developing software solutions based on time-of-flight sensors at the University of Lübeck since 2002. Together they founded gestigon in 2011 with seed-funding from High-Tech Gründerfonds, Mittelständische Beteiligungsgesellschaft Schleswig-Holstein and local business angels. In March 2012 Moritz von Grotthuss joined the company as advisor and later became CEO, being considered a late-founder. The same month, gestigon received an Innovation Award at CeBIT 2012, being one of the 15 startups to receive an award out of 276 candidates. In January 2013, Gestigon participated at CES in Las Vegas and, later that year, also at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York City. The next year Visteon and Volkswagen used Gestigon's gestures solutions in their products presented at CES 2014 and CeBIT 2014 where it won the “CeBIT Innovation Award”. Further public displays of gestigon's technologies include Audi at CES 2015 and CES 2016; Volkswagen and Infineon. Gestigon launched its Virtual Realitysolution Carnival at the TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco in September 2015 using an Oculus Rift and different depth sensors. The first demo using a mobile device was done at the CES 2015. Gestigon has partnered with several companies that develop hardware solutions, especially depth sensors, to provide sensing solutions. In 2015 Gestigon partnered with Inuitive, a 3D computer vision and image processors developer, to create a VR unit. The system was presented at CES 2016 assembled on an Oculus Rift development kit. In July 2015, Gestigon closed its Series A financing round with nbr technology ventures GmbH as a primary investor headed by Fabian von Kuenheim. In this financing round the company received additional investments from High-Tech Gründerfonds and Vorwerk Direct Selling Ventures. In March 2017, Gestigon developed software that recognizes driving gestures.
Products
Gestigon develops software that works with 3D sensors to recognize human gestures, poses and biometrical features in real time. Gecko is a feature tracker developed by the company that tracks an individual measuring their biometric features. Flamenco is a software for Finger and Hand Gesture Control. Gestigon has developed Carnival SDK, a software for augmented reality and virtual reality, which allows users see and use their hands in virtual interfaces. Gestigon's solutions are based on skeleton recognition: the software recognizes the body parts in 3D data making the recognition faster and more accurate. The software is sensor agnostic and can work based on the data from any depth module using time-of-flight-, stereo- or structured light technologies.
