Many experts think 2016 will be the first year of VR era as the publishing of HTC vive, Oculus Rift, Samsung gear and Sony PS VR. Almost all technology giants are trying to seize the opportunity in VR industry. However, everyone is just the beginner in this game, many small companies also have their own breakthrough that may change the rules.

“uSens” is one of the small, but unstoppable companies.

The background of the company.

The company was founded in 2013, in San Joes, California. The founders are a couple, Anli He and Dr. Yue Fei. Anli holds BE degree in Computer Engineering from Wuhan University, MS of Computer Science from Syracuse University and MBA from Duke University. After graduating, she gained much technical and business experience in both software and hardware fields. Dr. Fei has 12 years’ experience as a lead scientist in Human-Computer interaction, Computer Vision, and Virtual Reality. They both gave up well-paid career and started the company.

“I know it’s rare that both husband and wife start a business, especially for Chinese culture,” Anli said, “but we just know it’s the right thing to do.

In March 2015, the company launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund its VR/AR hardware product, Impression Pi. Until May, 2015, the project has raised about $0.3 million dollars from more than 508 supporters. in June, 2015, The company has completed $5.5 million pre-a round financing leaded by International Data Group.

Their products.

The core product, impression Pi looks very like other VR handset like Samsung Gear or Oculus Rfit, but it’s more compatible and as the product of a start-up company, impression Pi is very mature already

The device is fully wireless and empowered by mobile phone, it's Compatible with existing VR mobile apps. Both VR and 3D AR are immersive and >90 degrees viewing angle. Except just viewing the 3D scene, the users can interact with it with impression Pi. Impression Pi allows free hand 3D interaction>60fps with sub-mm accuracy; it also allows head orientation and position tracking with > 5 meters movement range.

“The interactivity feature is the biggest highlight of our production,” Anli said.

Biggest highlight

To ensure better interaction between the users and what they see in the heaset, Usens developed several paneled technologies.

1. Gesture controls

Unlike some devices that can only capture some specific gestures, Impression Pi can capture any gesture and with computer vision algorithm, it can sense hand actions and gestures in 3D. The algorithm is also mobile-friendly and enables gesture control on mobile VR devices. Impression Pi makes interacting with 3D content more convenient and natural. The users can take phones or control the interfaces without taking off the headset.

2. Position tracking.

The device can not only track the parallel motion of users’ head, but also the motion from four directions, front, back, left and right. The tracking area has no restriction on range, the precision degree of short distance is about 5mm. By observing the relative position, Impression Pi quickly calculates your actual movements with a high degree of precision.

For now, both Oculus and HTC vive can achieve the translation detection, but they have to use camera or laser transmitter; only Impression Pi uses the detection from inside to outside and with the help of outward camera to build the model. This can largely improve the mobility of VR headset.

3. Head Rotation Tracking

To give the users more immersive VR/AR experience, Impression Pi can track the rotation of users head and make the images that the users see more coherent.

4. The combination of VR and AR.

Through the dual camera module, the device can not only track the location of the user, but also captures and displays the real world to the user, then overlays VR images and virtual objects, like living holograms. With collision detection capability, Impression Pi gives a warning based on obstacles it detects in the real world.

“This technology has been achieved in the headset that connected to PC,” Anli said, “but we haven’t applied it on the mobile headset yet, we are still testing it.”

5. Mobile first

The focus of the company now is developing the ability of the headset to connect with mobile phone. Why mobile first?

The first reason is the compatibility of the device parts is better in terms of mobile devices. Secondly, the “module” and “algorithm” are easier to apply on the mobile devices. Thirdly, the suitability of the mobile devices offer more users the access to VR experience.

Their difficulty

Although the whole team of Usens is on fire now, as a new company, there are still lots of difficulties to overcome.

1. Improve user experience

“User experience is a very broad idea, we need to narrow it down and fix every detail,” Anli said.

One of the big problems is the connection between the headset and mobile phone. Though the device is compatible with both IOS and Android, the performance on IOS is much better than the other.

2. How to improve the interactivity of the device.

Now, impression Pi can show users immersive VR videos to users, but the interactive elements need to be strengthened. Not only the head position track, the goal is to track more body moves and let the users interact with what they see through the headset.

HTC vive is the best device on this interactivity feature, but to take the most advantage of it, the users need to use controllers. What Usens wants to do is extending the 3D hand tracking to other body parts. In that way, Impression Pi can be used in more fields like video games, shopping, news reporting, telecommunications, etc.

Future goal

The company is quite ambitious and believes their products can explore a new field in VR world.

Looking forward, their next goal is promoting their products. In order to expand the market, they hope to achieve mass production and lower the cost. To accomplish that goal, they have to work on compatibility of their products on smartphones.

“Luckily, our core members have the experience working in big smartphone companies like Apple or Samsung,” Anli said. “We believe we can solve that problem.”