Microsoft Purchasing Chip Company Canesta

Microsoft just goes to the bakery and orders one chip company, right? I go there for cookies. Microsoft may very well be on the verge of buying Canesta, a chip company that specializes in gesture recognition technology – the kind that lets people control devices by moving their bodies rather than touching or clicking. This technology, when combined with cameras, allows devices to perceive the world in three dimensions. Prepare for robot apocalypse.

Other companies that've invested in Canesta are: Honda, which hopes to use the technology to put 3D sensors in cars, and Quanta, a laptop manufacturer of many of the major brands in the world that hopes to use the technology to build laptops this year with 3-D camera modules.

Microsoft is already in business with Canesta rival company PrimeSense, that company being another which deals in tech that allows games to be controlled with body motions, and it's unclear whether the two companies will be working together or if they're going to get in a fight and we'll have to turn this car around and go straight home. We'll see. Microsoft also acquired 3DV systems, another gesture recognition tech company last year. Now they will all be friends.

[Via NYTimes]