Canesta (Sunnyvale, CA) has signed a definitive agreement to have its products, technology, intellectual property, customer contracts, and other resources acquired by Microsoft (Redmond, WA). Canesta is a maker of 3-D sensing technology critical to making natural user interfaces (NUI)--or gesture recognition--possible.

According to Jim Spare, Canesta president and CEO, “This is very exciting news for the industry. There is little question that within the next decade we will see natural user interfaces become common for input across all devices. With Microsoft’s breadth of scope from enterprise to consumer products, market presence, and commitment to NUI, we are confident that our technology will see wide adoption across many applications that embody the full potential of the technology.”

Canesta is the inventor of a single chip 3-D sensing technology platform and a large body of intellectual property. With 44 patents granted to date and dozens more on file, the company has made breakthroughs in many areas critical to enabling natural user interfaces broadly across many platforms. Some of these include the CMOS 3-D sensing pixels, innovations in semiconductor device physics, mixed-signal IC chip design, optics, signal processing algorithms, and computer vision software.

No details of the agreement have been disclosed. The acquisition is expected to be completed before the end of this year.