This California company wants to turn your selfie into a virtual reality avatar
The Pasadena-based tech firm, housed in the Idealab business incubator, has developed a technology that allows users to create virtual reality avatars of themselves. And once someone’s virtual self has been created it can do “virtually” anything, from climbing a mountain or attending a rock concert to riding a gondola through the canals of Venice, Italy.
obEN’s proprietary artificial intelligence technology can create a personal avatar by simply combining someone’s image and voice recording. And the avatar that emerges looks and speaks exactly like … well, you.
As VR and AR make their way into an increasing number of fields they’re gaining traction with investors. obEN just secured $7.7 million in venture capital funding led by some of China’s most important VR and AR investors. The company plans to use those funds to grow its team of world-class scientists and identify new partnerships.
obEN was also chosen as one of 33 companies to participate in HTC Corp.’s VIVE X accelerator program.
George Djorgovski, chairman of the astronomy department at Caltech and founding director of the Center For Data-Driven Discovery, has been involved in virtual reality technology for the past eight years.
“It’s changing the way we do science,” he said. “VR is way more effective than teleconferencing because people have a 90 percent sense of being there. We did some classes and lectures in VR and it’s very good for data visualization. Being inside of the data gives you a much better perception.
See the full story here: http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/11/07/this-california-company-wants-to-turn-your-selfie-into-a-virtual-reality-avatar/