Qeexo and its touchscreen software spin out of Carnegie Mellon, land $2.3M

Qeexo, a software startup focusing on a mobile touch screen technology called FingerSense, raised $2.3 million in venture cash Thursday.

The San Jose, Calif.-based startup was spun out of Carnegie Mellon University’s well regarded Human-Computer Interaction Institute. Qeexo employs nine people, three in San Jose and six engineers in Pittsburgh.

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The Qeexo team is hailing their FingerSense touchscreen software as a game changer that will breathe new life into what they consider a stagnant field.

Qeexo co-founder and chief executive Sang Won Lee said FingerSense is the first mobile touch screen solution that can differentiate between the fingertip, knuckle, nail, and stylus. In other words, you can use just about any portion of your hand to initiate and control commands.

“Everyone can do a knuckle tap and activate the machine,” Lee said. FingerSense “allows conventional touch screens to understand different outputs with mobile devices.”

According to Qeexo:

“FingerSense radically enhances the functionality and usability of mobile devices by enabling the touchscreen to distinguish between and respond differently to input from various parts of the hand or stylus. The patented technology analyzes the unique acoustic “signature” of physical objects to identify what is touching the screen.”

Lee told VentureBeat that the value proposition of FingerSense is that it can be embedded on tablets and smartphones without added cost, and it doesn’t take up huge amounts of memory on the devices. Lee said multi-touch technology has been around since 2007 but that FingerSense is generations ahead of existing platforms.

While many touchscreen docks at grocery stores and box retailers, for example, use a stylus to command prompts when conducting a transaction, Qeexo eliminates that need. Using your finger, knuckle, or palm is sufficient.

“Qeexo is enriching the touch experience without the need for accesories,” Lee said.

The startup will use this latest infusion of money to build out its engineering and business development teams. Lee said Qeexo is currently engaged in talks with a number of companies about deploying their patented software.

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