Israeli sensor startup linked to PS3 'Eye Toy'

LONDON — Prime Sense Inc., an Israeli startup company that has reportedly just raised a first round of funding, has been linked to an upgrade to the "Eye Toy" for the Sony Playstation.

Prime Sense (Herzeliya Pituach, Israel) has developed a sensor plus digital processor to provide a real-time 3-D mapping of objects in space, according to the company's Website. In essence it appears to be an image sensor and processor combination which perceives the world in 3D and derives an understanding of the world based on sight, in the same way that humans do.

For the Eye Toy application it is expected that the Prime Sense sensor would be used to view the user so that his or her position and movements can be abstracted and then applied to the "through-character" in a computer game.

"The device includes a sensor, which sees a user (including their complete surroundings), and a digital component, or brain which learns and understands user movement within those surroundings," according to the Prime Sense Website. "Prime Sense’s interactive device can see, track and react to user movements outside the computer, all without change of environment or wearable equipment for the end user. The closed device is plug and play and platform independent," it also adds.

Prime Sense also provides a riddle for visitors to its Website in the form of Leonardo da Vinci style mirror writing and an embedded message. But it provides no details of the device, its design or manufacturing status, its resolution, or what process technologies are being targeted for its manufacture.

While a design win with Sony Computer Entertainment would be a hot one for any company, for an unfunded and unproven startup it would be almost unprecedented. However, Prime Sense has the advantage of Orna Berry, former Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Government of Israel, as its chairperson. The Office of the Chief Scientist manages Israel’s industrial R&D programs, which in the years of Berry's tenure, 1997 to 2000, had budgets of more than $450 million per year.