AR/VR startup uSens completed a series A round of fundraising to the tune of $20 million. uSens was founded in 2013 and is working on inside-out position and hand tracking technologies.
uSens promises an “inside-out 3D hand tracking” system, as well as “6DOF [degrees of freedom] head position tracking for both mobile and tethered AR/VR systems.” The technology is meant to enhance VR platforms by providing them with positional tracking, AR overlays and gesture controls. Inside-out positional tracking is the most significant potential value-add that the company could offer to the existing mobile VR marketplace.
Leap Motion has already come out with hand tracking technology that is both first to market and pretty effective. What has yet to be released is a positional tracking product for mobile VR headsets that can do for untethered VR locomotion what Leap Motion is doing for controller-less hand interactions. It’s a technical problem a variety of companies are trying to solve, including Google and Facebook.
uSens currently exists in a prototype form that has a ways to go. An influx of $20 million, however, should go a long way to helping the startup reach the next level — the bulk of this series A will go toward preparing for a “2016 release.”
The round’s lead investor is Fosun Kinzon Capital, but it also features contributions from Maison Capital, Great Capital, Fortune Capital, Oriental Fortune Capital, iResearch Capital, Chord Capital, and the ARM Innovation Ecosystem Accelerator. Fosun Kinzon is a $400 million Chinese investment fund that focuses primarily on early stage investments in emerging Internet companies. This contribution to a hardware manufacturer is a bit out of character for the massive investor and further serves to demonstrate China’s increasing interest in the VR/AR space.
