Khronos to Create Open Input-Device Standard

SAN FRANCISCO /BUSINESS WIRE/ -- The Khronos Group announced a new initiative to create an open, platform-independent, royalty-free standard for accessing a wide diversity of advanced input devices, including depth cameras, motion-tracking sensors, touch-screens, and haptic devices. In response to requests and proposals from multiple members, Khronos has created a StreamInput working group that TransGaming Inc. has offered to initially chair. This royalty-free standard will be developed under the proven Khronos development process, aiming for a first public release within 12 months. Any interested company is welcome to join Khronos to make contributions, influence the direction of the specification, and gain early access to draft specifications before public release. The StreamInput working group will commence work during April 2011. More details on joining Khronos can be found on the organization's Web site or by mailing [email protected].

The Khronos StreamInput working group will drive industry consensus to create a cross-platform API to provide applications with both high-level semantic input as well as low-level device management capabilities, enabling significant innovations by sensor and device manufacturers while simplifying portable application development. The new API will support a general-purpose framework for consistently handling new generation sensors and traditional input devices, such as keyboards, mice, track pads, and joysticks. The API will also provide systemwide sensor synchronization for advanced multi-sensor applications, such as augmented reality, and will use Khronos' proven extension mechanisms to enable new types of input devices to be easily added and supported.

"The StreamInput working group already has a strong variety of supporters both inside and outside of Khronos, and we hope that many other companies will join us to help build a lasting standard that can be broadly adopted across multiple devices and market segments," said Gavriel State, founder and CTO at TransGaming Inc. "TransGaming has extensive experience in handling diverse input devices across many platforms. We have brought our real-world experience to bear on initiating a general input solution that will benefit the entire industry."

"Natural and intuitive human-machine interfaces, in particular using 3D depth sensing and gesture recognition technologies, are rapidly being adopted by developers and customers in consumer electronics and professional markets," said Eric Krzeslo, Chief Strategy Officer at Softkinetic. "Softkinetic has been a pioneer in that space and welcomes Khronos' initiative to standardize common APIs across the natural interface continuum and traditional interfaces, to give developers a solid foundation for building re-usable applications. We look forward to bring our experience in 3D cameras hardware, 3D gesture recognition software, and applications to this initiative."

"Input devices now range from simple keyboards, through 9-axis motion positional sensors, to depth ranging cameras, with sophisticated image processing. A robust input API is essential to drive the market adoption of advanced sensors by enabling input fusion innovation under a common API that provides portability to application developers," said Neil Trevett, President of Khronos and Vice President of Mobile Content at NVIDIA. "This initiative will also enable advanced applications, such as augmented reality, that need to process and synchronize multiple sensors for a truly seamless end-user experience."

About Khronos
The Khronos Group is an industry consortium, creating open standards to enable the authoring and acceleration of parallel computing, graphics, and dynamic media on a wide variety of platforms and devices. Khronos standards include OpenGL, OpenGL ES, WebGL, OpenCL, OpenMAX, OpenVG, OpenSL ES, OpenKODE, and COLLADA. All Khronos members are able to contribute to the development of Khronos specifications, are empowered to vote at various stages before public deployment, and are able to accelerate the delivery of their cutting-edge media platforms and applications through early access to specification drafts and conformance tests.

Khronos, StreamInput, WebGL, WebCL, COLLADA, OpenKODE, OpenVG, OpenSL ES, and OpenMAX are trademarks of the Khronos Group Inc. OpenCL is a trademark of Apple Inc., and OpenGL is a registered trademark and the OpenGL ES and OpenGL SC logos are trademarks of Silicon Graphics International, used under license by Khronos. All other product names, trademarks, and/or company names are used solely for identification and belong to their respective owners.