Occipital closes $12M more as it strives to build a ‘perceptual engine’

With this round, Occipital is looking to expand its tracking platform into what it calls its “Perception Engine,” which will require it making some deeper moves into machine learning, pushing into technologies that reside outside of simply defining the geometry of a space. The company’s $379 Structure sensor allows users to 3D scan their environment and objects using the high-frame-rate depth camera that attaches to the back of an iOS device. Occipital’s Canvas software solution allows customers to use the camera to develop more refined CAD models. The company later introduced a mixed reality dev kit that brought positional tracking to the iPhone. As its focus moves closer toward the market that Intel’s RealSense and other large companies have been aiming to capture, Occipital has its sights set higher than before with some new cash to do so.