Xesto

Prototyping & development platform for educators/creators to immediately integrate gestures as learning tools, producing stronger engagement & increased retention. 

Current education methods are such that a world class education is only offered to a selected few.  Our inability to educate individual on their terms results in a world which limits individuals who cannot or will not learn from traditional methods.  Methods which have not changed in over 50 years.

If educators/researchers had access to malleable tools to add gesture control to current applications, and emerging educational tools (VR, etc..), they could explore mechanisms to involve students in more engaging lessons and train them for new skills. Furthermore, gesture enabled applications should be used (and personalized) to engage students with cognitive or developmental disorders.

Without a platform or tool to enable gesture interaction, building with gestures is expensive and time consuming, making it unfeasible.   

Our ML PaaS allows educators and engineers to rapidly prototype, test and integrate touchless gestures in interfaces through an API and add personalized gestures to applications for specific student needs. The solution is three-fold: a prototyping phase, and the phase for integration. The creator can then allow end users to also create their own personal gestures to integrate into applications.

During the prototyping phase Xesto’s gesture and AR/VR Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) will work with world educators to identify the most effective areas to integrate gesture recognition.  We provide insight into adapting these technologies to industry and produce a road map to revolutionize the worlds education.

Embodied cognition is a type of learning relating to the acquisition of new information and it’s comprehension: kinesthetic learning lets students use their entire bodies to process information, and use the environment to situate themselves, significantly increasing retention. Bodily experience through the use of actions and movements can be considered crucial in the development of cognitive and behavioral skills and can drastically improve sensorimotor impairments. The flexibility of motion-based touchless experiences allow for complete customizability on a situational basis, permitting a wide-spread use in classrooms & homes. 

Introducing next generation interfaces into the education system early is critical for a series of reasons: it naturalizes next generation HCI, changing education tools to benefit both educators and students through personalization and increased engagement. 

Xesto allows for the easy integration and personalization of gestures into applications and can be used to design and customize motion-based games and experiences within a digital environment (VR, AR, screen, or wall projection). A digital environment provides more focused, predictable and replicable stimuli than conventional learning tools. Beyond higher engagement, these focused tools may reduce anxiety and barriers to social communications for students with ASD, and related disorders.

Xesto will be a world leader in gesture recognition and AR/VR technologies.  As beneficiaries of a world class education we have a responsibility to use our capabilities in enhancing the world education system.  This is why we will champion the campaign to make transformative technologies a staple in international education standards.  As AR/VR advisors to the educators of the world Xesto will work collaboratively to revolutionize how information is processed and retained.

We are building a new technology approach in a nascent market, making it available for any creator or developer. Gesture recognition scalability will not be viable until developers and creators are able to build with gestures. We allow current hardware to have gesture capabilities (ie iPhone X, or HTC Vive), and provide content creators the ability to prototype gesture recognition capability in an agile fashion, allowing creators to test various prototypes before committing to a single design.  The outcome is a product which allows for more customization using a methodology which allows for minimal risk of wasted development hours.

Xesto is an innovation that will change human computer interaction. Xesto enables easy software integration of touchless gestures into applications which allows for end users to interact with educational applications & tools across mediums (real world screens, projections, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality) using body movements without any physical contact with digital tools. Xesto’s core functionality is machine learning, an advanced type of technology. Interactions will move away from touchscreens and will increasingly make use of voice, ambient technology, biometrics, movement and gestures. Xesto enables anyone to integrate gesture interaction into their applications, frictionless.

We are offering a flexible machine learning middleware solution for any creator to make their applications touchless and interactive. In the next 12 months Xesto will be compatible across all leading depth sending hardware, including smartphones, VR headsets and portable devices. Furthermore, we aim to be industry agnostic – bringing gesture recognition to creators across any geography and any vertical. We will introduce a continuous learning aspect, to better recognize users gestures with increased usage and time. 

In the future, the use of touchless gesture recognition technology will be ubiquitous. I want advanced technology to reconnect people with digital and real environments in a way that is user-centric, thoughtful and constructive. Gesture interaction will change the world in a monumental way, whether it be through physical or mental rehabilitation in VR, new interfaces for people with disabilities , interfaces that decrease contagion & contamination for visitors and workers. We are building a tool to make touchless interfaces accessible to everyone, and are making gesture interfaces available to an audience that was previously constrained to status quo interfaces.

Online channels and outbound emails. I reach out to potential users, customers, partners through partnerships, conferences, tradeshows and hackathons. Our solution is a middleware that will be deployed through online channels. The communities we are targeting will directly use our portal and access gesture prototyping tool online. The creator or educator will integrate gestures into applications across different mediums (AR, VR, desktop). Xesto will build the creator an out of the box solution to integrate these gestures into applications at a high level of accuracy.  The end user will interact with the application as they would any normal software application. 

We launched our closed Beta 2 months ago and have 65 users that have tested and used the platform. These are predominantly university students. We are currently signing on enterprise clients and partners who are eager to use the platform because it cuts their R&D hours down by over 90% 

Within the next 12 months we will to put gesture control into the hands of 50,000 people. Over the next 3 years, 10,000,000 people. We will be focusing on these verticals: educational and rehabilitative AR/VR, worker training, autonomous vehicular interaction, sign language translation.

Due to the rapid use nature of our platform, we allow researchers/creators to build the most meaningful and immersive experiences for end users. Educators, researchers and creators are the most knowledgeable about their users’ needs and can tailor experiences. Experiences can be entirely re-edited by parents or educators to cater specifically to each users strengths and deficits.

To be on the leading edge of the advancements in AR/VR, AI, and gesture recognition, Xesto’s talent consists of educated, passionate individuals. 

Our team holds 10 STEM-field degrees from top universities.  We are all beneficiaries of a world class education and believe that we have an obligation to use our technologies to provide this experience to all.

The passion we have for education is how we will make an impact.  Each memer leadership team has a personal passion for educating others.  It is a qualification we identified in facilitating a collaborative environment and one we expect from all Xesto employees.

Prototyping: Freemium. Free for non-commercial usage. Professional is $50 / developer / month. The data obtained in the prototyping phase is valuable as it will be used in a gesture crowdsourcing search tool we are building and launching in 2019.

Development: Once the team has determined what their gestures are, they request accurate models built on expansive datasets. The pricing will be determined by gesture quantity, & what hardware they are looking to use (if we are not developed for it, we will build an integration).

Deployment: The price will scale according to either 1) API calls and usage or 2) licensing costs. 

Our adoption challenges are two-fold: 

1. Adoption by creators, developers, researchers and educators can by stifled by the convenience of using the status quo 

2. Introducing applications with a new paradigm of interaction to those making purchasing decisions can introduce a prolonged adoption

We are a small startup building a tool to solve the challenges of introducing a new paradigm of human computer interaction. We are early stage and lack the network to penetrate the educational technology ecosystem. Solve can help us by connecting us with industry partners in the Solve ecosystem that are in the education space. 

For this solution to succeed the public perception of education must change. We provide a tool to make AR/VR a staple of the education system. Once these connections are established and we receive buy in from the education system our team will identify key areas to improve education tools.  Our SMEs will provide training to educators, allowing them to unlock AR/VR for students.  This is how we envision the education system to lead the adoption of emerging technologies, improving learning experiences for entire populations.

Xesto can make this a reality provided Solve extends its network of education professionals.