Facebook's Oculus unit to buy Israeli gesture recognition technology developer Pebbles Interfaces

Facebook's Oculus unit yesterday struck a deal to buy Israeli 3D hand gesture recognition technology developer Pebbles Interfaces for an undisclosed sum.

Israel's Calcalist financial newspaper said the deal was worth tens of millions of dollars

Based in Israel, Pebbles Interfaces has spent the past five years developing technology that uses custom optics, sensor systems and algorithms to detect and track hand movement.

Pebbles Interfaces investors include Chinese mobile phone maker Xiaomi, Israeli venture capital fund Giza and US storage firm SanDisk, Calcalist said.

Pebbles Interfaces will be joining the hardware engineering and computer vision teams at Oculus to help advance virtual reality, tracking, and human-computer interactions.

''At Pebbles Interfaces, we've been focused on pushing the limits of digital sensing technology to accelerate the future of human-computer interaction. Through micro-optics and computer vision, we hope to improve the information that can be extracted from optical sensors, which will help take virtual reality to the next level,'' said, Nadav Grossinger, CTO of Pebbles Interfaces.