Umoove
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Umoove, an Israeli hi-tech start-up company, announced Tuesday the release of their first product on the App Store. The application, called Umoove Experience, will be available to download free of charge, on any modern iOS device January 14th, 2014.

The Umoove Experience features a 3D avatar that flies through a village, enabling full user control and navigation via face and head gestures. The app is powered by Umoove’s face and eye-tracking technology and gives users a platform to control and navigate their virtual surroundings using the most natural and intuitive tool that they have: their head. All of this with no extra hardware, using the device's front facing camera only. 

Founded in 2010, Umoove developed a technology that tracks face and eye movements on any mobile device despite dynamic and unstable mobile environments. Umoove requires no additional hardware add-on and functions at a low CPU of less than 5% on contemporary devices. The company has filed for fifteen patents. 

This is the first time that such technology is available on iOS devices. “The main focus behind the launch is to introduce face and eye interaction to the public and to wet their pallets for what is to come,” said Tuvia Elbaum, Umoove co-founder and CMO. 

The Umoove Experience release is intended to serve as the catalyst that will help launch a new sort of human-machine interaction to mainstream audiences. In the coming months, Umoove, along with various partners, will be releasing more face and eye interaction technology across various verticals in the fields of advertising, gaming, medical, security and more. 

Umoove has stated that their key objective as a company is to enhance the mobile user experience by adding a new layer of interaction on top of touch. “You can take an existing application and, suddenly, it becomes a whole new world where you feel that you are a part of the experience,” said Yitzi Kempinski, co-founder and CEO. 

Umoove has also announced that the complete version of their SDK is now officially available to the public. The SDK, which had been in beta since March 2013, can be integrated for free by signing up via the Umoove website. Last March, Samsung introduced some basic head and eye tracking capabilities on the Galaxy S4. Umoove takes this to the next level, with far more extensive capabilities, and most importantly, opens it to the creativity of iOS developers.