The Story behind the Story: Microchip Technology’s MGC3130 e-field 3D gesture controller

The story of Microchip Technology’s MGC3130 e-field 3D gesture controller begins in Gilching, Germany, a suburb of Munich, in 2002. That was where and when Ident Technology was founded for the purpose of developing capacitive technologies for use in human-machine interaction. The German firm’s initial thrust was to develop IP that it could license to others for development.

Ident began hiring people in 2005 and also had its first VC round. By 2006, the company’s developments had gained some industry attention and it was contacted by a German auto manufacturer looking to create a new human interface for its in-car entertainment system, that is, its radio. The automaker wanted some means of control that would be less distracting than traditional controls, allowing a driver to interact with the radio without having to look at it. Based on these parameters, Ident began developing technology for gesture recognition at a distance. With this major challenge, the company expanded its staff and two of today’s principal staff members, Technical Director Roland Aubauer and Global Marketing Manager Andreas Guete, joined up.

According to Aubauer and Guete, over the next few years, the company started to see that it’s IP strategy was not going to be highly profitable. For one thing, it would involve having to provide a great deal of support and education for each customer to allow that customer to develop a product tailored to its market. Ident wanted to develop its offerings so that they could be used universally, allowing someone to itegrate Ident technology and apply it easily to a PC, video game, or even a coffee maker. And as the iPhone entered the market in 2007, Ident realized that 3D interfaces would be the next step. Things like an “air wheel” control, in which the user makes a circular gesture in the air to, say, control the volume of a device, would likely be wanted.

To feasibly address this potential marked, the company embarked on a plan to develop its own hardware, an IC, that would contain all the sensing as well as the logic needed to interpret gestures — gestures that would be sensed at a distance by disruptions in an e-field controlled by the chip. They dubbed the device The GestIC and, to begin this venture, in September 2011 they involved Robert Bosch Venture Capital, the investment arm of electronics giant Bosch, as a co-investor.

By early 2012, the company was showing prototypes of its chip, and had attracted the interest of Microchip Technology. Companies other than Microchip were interested in acquiring Ident, but the principals at Ident decided that the fact that Microchip was already involved with capacitive touch technology and had a worldwide sales force that understood the user-interface market made Microchip their best choice for bringing the technology to market. In May 2012, Microchip announced it had acquired Ident.

The GestIC, officially the MGC3130 e-field 3D gesture controller, was formally launched in November 2012, with production quantities to be available in about six months. Of equal significance, as the chip was entering the marketplace in volume, Microchip also launched the Hillstar development kit that simplified using the chip.

Today, the GestIC team is fully integrated into Microchip’s Human Machine Interface Division , and is directly involved with over 100 customer projects, some of which are due to hit the market shortly. They know indirectly that there are some thousand projects underway in which developers are experimenting with the technology.
Further, feedback from users has already generated some new developments which Microchip should unveil late this year or early next.