Tricorder Technology Plc, a UK-based 3D software company, is hoping to raise up to 2.68m pounds of additional capital by a new issue of shares. The cash will fund the company’s efforts to license its technology to a large range of potential markets and also enable it to develop its own products for the film and broadcast industry. Tricorder, in which venture capitalists 3i Group and Microsoft Corp-backed Amadeus I are already investors, cites the internet, industrial design, healthcare, computer games, retail, and forensics as potential markets. Tricorders’s technology is based on a photogrammetry approach – the analysis of two or more 2D images to obtain a 3D image. Software-based technology makes it less dependent on hardware, apart from a digital camera and a PC. Tricorder says that a version of a handheld product aimed at a mass market is now being developed with licensing partners that will allow any digital camera users to produce color 3D images. The company’s static products, which use a four-camera system and a PC, are aimed at uses such as industrial design, healthcare, video conferencing and interactive games playing. Tricorder says it has received over 2,000 enquiries from interested prospects in the film and broadcast market and that within the last six weeks it says it has had letters of intent and orders worth 170,000 pounds. Tricorder raised 1m pounds in 1997 and the shares were then traded on the OFEX over-the counter-exchange. It raised another 1.75m pounds in February 1998 from a group of investors and the shares were then moved the alternative investment market.
