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After 14 years of developing inside of semiconductor giant Intel, RealSense is striking out on its own.<\/p>\n
RealSense<\/a> sells cameras that use stereoscopic imaging, a process that combines two images of the same object from different angles to create depth, enhanced with infrared light. This technology helps machines like robots, drones, and autonomous vehicles have a better perception of the physical world around them. The tech is also used for facial authentication.<\/p>\n \u201cThe common denominator of all of them is they live in the real, physical world,\u201d CEO Nadav Orbach told TechCrunch. \u201cThey need to understand the surroundings in 3D and based on that, take and plan actions right in the world. And for that, they need a real-time, high-accuracy ability to understand the surrounding in 3D. And that\u2019s what we do best.\u201d<\/p>\n Orbach joined Intel back in 2006 as a CPU architect in Israel. He started working on vision technology in 2011 before becoming the general manager of incubation and disruptive innovation in 2022 and moving to San Francisco last year.<\/p>\n \u201cWe knew and understood that 3D perception was going to be big,\u201d Orbach said about the early days of RealSense. \u201cTo be honest, we weren\u2019t quite sure in which domain. We tried that across different market segments and different applications, all the way from gesture recognition with computers, phones, until we really found our sweet spot over the years, mostly in robotics.\u201d<\/p>\n The company works with numerous industries outside of robotics, too. Orbach said they\u2019ve heard from fish farms looking to track the volume inside their pens. Chipotle has also used RealSense cameras<\/a>, in a partnership with AI restaurant software company PreciTaste, to track when food containers are low.<\/p>\n RealSense has more than 3,000 customers and has seen a surge in new interest over the last three to four years as AI has improved. With that, the applications for robotics, especially, have scaled.<\/p>\n The company realized it may have a better chance keeping up with demand \u2014\u00a0and scaling itself \u2014 if it spun out of Intel and raised its own capital, Orbach said.<\/p>\n