Rithmio Nabs The Cash Needed To Build A Gesture Recognition Platform

Rithmio hopes to build and release the first gesture recognition platform that other companies can build into their products. Co-founded by Adam Tilton and Prashant Mehta PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, the company just announced that it secured $650k in seed funding to make it happen.

The company previously demonstrated a user navigating a map using a wrist-based device. Yet the goal isn’t to build yet another wearable. The company envisions helping brands integrate its gesture recognition product into wearables and smartphones. Imagine a wearable for weightlifters that tracks and critiques their movement. Or a smartphone app that turns the phone into a Wiimote-like device.

Rithmio states that its platform can learn new user-defined gestures in six to ten seconds. From there, its proprietary software can detect, classify and analyze the movements in real time.

The $650,000 seed round of financing was led by Marcin Kleczynski, CEO of Malwarebytes, with Illinois Ventures, Techra Investments, Hyde Park Venture Partners, Serra Ventures, BonaVentura and Fox Ventures also participated in the investment along with angel investors.

Rithmio will use the cash to accelerate the operational and technical development of its current product.

“We are incredibly energized by the support we have received,” said Adam Tilton, CEO and co-Founder of Rithmio said in a released statement. “We plan to utilize the funding to expand our product team with additional web and mobile developers. Additionally we’ll ramp up our new business and marketing programs.”