Studio that Provided Facial Recognition Technology for Star Wars is Bought by Apple

The tech firm that provided facial recognition technology for the upcoming Star Wars film has been bought by Apple for an undisclosed fee.

Faceshift is a motion capture technology that uses facial recognition to create animated avatars based on your facial expressions and movements. The Swiss based start-up behind the software has seen it's software used in other films and video games before but was recently spotted in a behind the scenes video for the new Star Wars film.

Apple's acquisition of Faceshift, along with other recent purchases and patents of AR pioneer Metaio and 3D sensor outfit PrimeSense shows their intent to take a bite out of the virtual and augmented reality market, though it is not known what their actual plans are with the technology. 

"Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans." an Apple spokesperson said.

There is speculation that Apple plans to launch a virtual-reality device in the near future though it still remains to be seen if that is related to the recent acquisition of Faceshift. With the likes of Samsung, Sony, Microsoft and Facebook already involved in Augmented/Virtual Reality technology with products like Oculus Rift (Facebook) and Playstation VR (Sony) it's possible that Apple could enter the market, though the company's lack of experience in the home video game market could be a stumbling block.

Apple is well known for it's secrecy and often surprise entries into different markets so we may have to wait till WWDC in June 2016 to see if they have plans for their recent acquisitions.